


The Gale Hatch

by messier51



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Cuddling, DCBB, DCBB 2015, F/M, M/M, Memory Loss, Physics, Pining, Universe Alteration, canon divergent at 10.21
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 10:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 42,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5087317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messier51/pseuds/messier51
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you forgot the greatest love of your life, but they came back to you anyway, what would you do?</p><p>Hunters aren’t supposed to get old, but seven years after eliminating demons from the Earth, Dean can honestly say that trying to live a life is harder than trying to save the world. His eyes and joints may be failing, but his ears work as well as they ever did, and the strange man in his kitchen sounds an awful lot like he wants Dean to help angels.</p><p>Angels aren’t supposed to exist, but Cas needs to find a way to save them all. Returning to the Winchesters will corrupt Sam and Dean again, but if anyone can help Heaven, they can. Even if Castiel can’t stop the spell eroding his siblings’ individuality, he selfishly wants his last moments to be with Dean. Is it a sin to want to be remembered?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dean Winchester's Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Canon-typical: Discussions of Alcoholism and past Sexual Harassment, Depression, and Mentions of Mental Illness. This fic uses memories and awareness-of-self and loss of each as a plot devices.
> 
> Written for DCBB 2015; illustrated by [clockworkrobots](http://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/): [art masterpost](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5093243).
> 
> Special thanks to [cornelius](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cornelius/) for all the encouragement, advice, and alpha/betaing, and to [ceeainthereforthat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ceeainthereforthat/) for sharing your writing wisdom. Thanks too to [yellowturtle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowturtle/), [knittinggoddess](http://knittinggoddess.tumblr.com/), and [Defiler_Wyrm](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Defiler_Wyrm/) for pointing out all kinds of mistakes. 
> 
> If the world doesn't look anything like this in eight years, I blame it on the fact that this is an alternate universe from our own.

** **

 

* * *

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 2:42 AM. 500 Locust Street, Lebanon, KS.**

“There’s an angel in my kitchen.” 

“Hnnnnnhhhh?” Sam should not have answered the phone at—he squints at the red numbers on the clock—2:42 AM, but who knows what it could have been. Dean doesn’t sound drunk though, thank goodness for small miracles. “That’s not a funny joke, and I actually like sleeping, okay?” He’s pretty sure some of what he said made sense as a response. Maybe.

He’s about to hang up on Dean, but the words coming out of the earpiece are just loud enough and serious enough to catch his attention.

“No man, like an actual, real _can’t-possibly-exist_ angel. Wings and everything —well, kind of.” 

“I thought those were on your shit list.” Sam speaks quietly and moves gently out of the blankets, careful not to disturb Jody. Dean’s never believed in angels. 

“That’s why I called you. What the fuck are we supposed to do about angels. What does the Bible say about them again?” Dean’s rushed words are a little too loud and Sam holds his phone at arm's length and squints at it as he shambles from soft bedroom carpet to smooth hallway wood onto cool kitchen tile.

“Woah woah. Slow down.” Sam stares blankly into the lowly-buzzing refrigerator, directly at the pitcher of filtered water they keep in there. It’s what he came in here for. He stares through the water, and rubs his face with his free hand before shaking off some of the sleep-stupor he’s in and grabbing the pitcher. “Angels usually bring messages, right? Did it say anything?” 

Sam pours water into one of the glasses in the drying rack, and perches himself precariously on one of the narrow kitchen stools Alex and Jody picked out. He sets down his glass of water and rubs his fingers across the notch in the countertop he keeps telling Jody he’ll fix when he gets some time. In the two-and-a-half years since he and Jody moved from the bunker to the two bedroom ranch on Locust Street they’ve slowly updated it from once-charming 1950s knotty-pine-and-linoleum type decor. The only thing they haven’t figured out yet is how they’re going to redo the countertops. 

“He said something about being an angel, and then looked at me funny before telling me I would want to call you. Sammy he knows our names. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” Dean almost sounds distraught, and Sam has a fleeting thought of surprise. Usually things that show up in Dean’s space in the middle of the night end up severely dead. 

“I didn’t even try to take him out, Sam, it was really weird.” 

Dean says it quietly, but it’s nice to know they’re on the same page still. Sam digs his thumbnail into the notch. 

“If we have to do this now, we can do this now. You wanna bring him here or should I come out there?” It’ll be a few hours either way. Sam hears muffled voices (Dean is talking to the angel?) while he downs what’s left of the water in his glass, and then Dean is on the line again. 

 “He said it can wait ‘til morning, and apologized for waking you up. I dunno man, go back to sleep. At least one of us can have a clear head about stuff tomorrow. What do you think?”

“I think I’m going to take you up on that.” Sam should be warm in bed, wrapped around Jody, not sitting at their counter in the dark. “I have no clue, Dean. If we’re not attacking or running away, what the Hell are we supposed to be doing?” Sam thinks that probably shouldn’t be such a difficult question to answer. He’s pretty happy that everyone’s okay with him going back to bed though. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be retired. Not tussling with supernatural creatures. If your visitor’s happy to wait ‘til morning for anything serious I think you should pro—” a yawn cuts Sam off, “probably get some shuteye too.” 

The noise Dean makes can be best described as “non-committal,” but Sam doesn’t have the energy to question it. That might lead to something other than crawling back into bed. 

“Call me when you wake up?” Sam tries to ignore how worried Dean sounds when he asks, as if Sam might not want to talk again.

“Yeah.”

“G’night Sam.” 

“Mhmm.”

Sam hangs up before anything can go terribly wrong. Worrying can wait for daylight. 

His side of the bed is a little cold, but it’s better than spending all night in a car. He’s not entirely sure why, but Sam’s fairly confident Dean will be fine. Maybe that’s the weird feeling Dean wouldn’t trust. Angels can’t be that bad though, right? 

 

* * *

**Cas - October 27, 2023. 3:00 AM. 905 S Summit Avenue, Sioux Falls, SD.**

“Dean, I—I apologize.” It’s not the right word, but it’s the only word he’s got for now. Dean is closed off, sitting at his small round kitchen table staring at the quiescent cell phone laying on its surface, and Cas can’t tell whether Dean’s going to fight or flee. Cas thinks both are probably better than listening to him.

“For what?”

He’s trying to apologize for getting here so late. So early. For showing up at all. For leaving—he’s not actually sure. He knows it’s wrong, what he did or what he’s trying to do. But he doesn’t quite understand how to apologize, or better yet, how to fix it. 

Seven years comprises a great deal more time across a human’s life than an angel’s. 

It would all be simpler if those seven years were all that had gone missing between them. 

Or maybe not. Cas realized long ago (but still too late) that statistical mechanics is a poor predictor for Dean Winchester’s emotional reactions. He can feel his eyes squinting at Dean as he thinks, but that’s never helped either. 

“Sam was right, you ought to sleep. You need your—” Cas pits memories against realities: humans really need more than four hours of sleep, and Dean never liked it when Cas offered to guard him, “rest. I will return in the morning.” 

“No.” 

Dean looks as shocked by the word coming out of his mouth as Cas is to hear it. 

“I would stay gone. But Dean, I need you.” 

That’s not what he meant to say. 

“I need your help,” it’s a good amendment, and still true. “Otherwise I would not have come,” _—_ _back. Would not have come back. Would have left you alone to your happy life. The one you deserved._ Cas manages not to mess up this time though. 

“No, as in, you don’t leave. Not as in you don’t come back. I don’t want you out of my sight ‘til I figure out what I’m supposed to be doing with you. I don’t know what kind of shitty beings angels are supposed to be but you can bet I’m gonna find out before I let you wander off to terrorize anyone else.” 

“I wouldn’t—“ Cas sounds indignant but changes tack at the look Dean gives him, “—fine. What do you want to know?” Cas sits down at the table facing Dean. He considers taking his jacket off, because that is the _appropriate_ thing to do. He doesn’t want to appear too comfortable though. Being comfortable would just make things —well... 

“How do I kill an angel?”

Cas takes out his blade, and hands it to Dean, pommel-first. “One of these. Although I’d prefer staying alive.” 

“Dude, you probably shouldn’t just hand people your weapons,” he sounds almost jocular, but still looks serious. He still looks like he’s caving inward. The sight is jarring; Dean always looks and feels like he’s imposing himself on the world, not the other way around. Even when he’s faking it. 

Cas studies the extra lines that cross Dean’s face like stress fractures in skin. There’s a spot on his left cheekbone that Cas wants to rub with his thumb, to see if it’d come off, but most of  the freckles on Dean’s face and arms have faded since Cas last saw them up close. The hair near Dean’s temples is losing its color, too. When Cas stays quiet just a little too long, Dean fires off a set of questions at him, “Do you have a name? And how do you know mine? And my brother’s?” 

“I have a name, yes. Yours was given to me by my superiors, as was your brother’s,” Cas hedges, with complete honesty. 

Cas watches the creases deepen on Dean’s face, and is unsurprised with the next request: “Let’s do that again. What’s your name?”

“Cast—Cas.” 

“Cas, Angel-of-God? Sounds frightening.” Dean’s eyebrows lift a fraction of a centimeter on his last word. So it’s _probably_ a joke. 

Cas still looks down at the table before answering. “Just an angel. God’s…more complicated.” 

“You’re tellin’ me. So then the part about our names. Maybe you got ‘em from your superiors, but you don’t speak to me like you read it off a memo. You _know_ my name. You talk to me like we’ve been friends for _years_ and I gotta be honest with you, _Cas_ , it’s freaking me out a little.” 

Dean holds the angel blade comfortably in his hand, hefting it with a small motion before slamming it onto the table in frustration. 

“You’re just like this goddamn blade. I’ve never seen it before in my life but somehow I know exactly how it would feel in my hand before I took it from you. I _knew how heavy the blade was_. There was no feeling of being off-balance and I should not be sitting at my kitchen table with some _creature_ I’ve never met before and feeling like, like…”

“Dean, you’re not sitting.” He’d pushed away from the table in his frustration. Or maybe just to have the advantage of height. 

“Dammit Cas, that’s not what I—”

Dean knows. He can’t know—maybe he understands something though. It’s not possible, not really, but when did either of the Winchesters ever do what they were supposed to? 

Dean squares his shoulders and draws a finger across his thinning hairline. He doesn’t look quite as confused anymore. 

“How many times?” 

Maybe he just found something to attack?

“What do you mean?”

“How many times have we done this? Are you some kind of trickster? Maybe a faerie? Are you playing with my memories or are you playing with time?” 

Or maybe it’s easier for Dean to believe in a known supernatural cause. And, he isn’t wrong—Cas closes his eyes—Dean just doesn’t know about angels. Deep breath in, deep breath out. It’s not relaxing, but the meditative gesture gives him a little extra time to think. Precious seconds for complex algorithmic potentials. No, just one question to answer, and not one that’s got boundary conditions. 

“This is the first time I’ve sat at this table. It’s not the first time I’ve spoken to you. It’s been—” _two years since I’ve seen you, although you did not see me and I thought I had more important things to do. I thought you were happier. But since we last spoke,_ “roughly seven years,” _and_ _three_ _months_ _…and_ _six_ _days,_ _if everything went the way they’d planned_ _…_ “but you  can’t remember that due to the side effects of the celestial shockwaves.” 

Honesty is worth a shot. 

“What. The. Fuck. Is any of that supposed to mean?” 

“I—” the technical explanation was the easy way out. It’s only part of the truth anyway. “I don’t know what I should or shouldn’t tell you. I believe you deserve the happiness you have now.”

Dean scoffs. “Happiness? Is that what you call it? You didn’t really answer though. What’s that got to do with it?” 

Of course Dean wants to know more. 

“Look, I came to you because I need your help. The details can wait until morning. I’m sure Sam will want to hear them all as well. The short version is: we did what we set out to do, Dean—slamming shut the Gates of Heaven. Just like closing up the Gates of Hell plucked every demon from the Earth and chained them to their icy pits, all of the angels were pulled from the Earth and hung from the Heavens. But whereas a human’s soul is tied to space, an angel’s grace is also tied to time. Every bit of angel was ripped from all of time when this happened. No trace left, no memory, no notion that we were ever real.” _Sort of. It’s complicated._

Dean looks confused, but maybe he’s too tired to protest anything. Yet. 

“The gaps where we existed were filled in by the time and space around them. Time didn’t change at all, everything that happened up until the point we slammed the gates remains unaltered. The rest of reality just interpolated between the gaps. Your lives were touched by the angels more than most, so while you’ve come to the same place, your memories are undoubtedly happier for having been altered. I don’t know if I can restore your memories to the originals, or prove anything that I’ve said.” 

Cas looks at his own hands as his monologue derails. He could try. He’s pretty good at healing. 

He’s still not good at fixing things though. Not like Dean is. 

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Cas echoes, but he has no clue what that’s supposed to mean. Maybe Dean has changed. Maybe Dean doesn’t care. 

“Yeah, okay. We’ll head to Lebanon in the morning. You can sleep on the couch,” Dean pauses when he reaches the kitchen door. “Unless you don’t sleep? How does that work? I uh, have an XBox if that’s more your thing?” 


	2. The First Test

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 8:30 AM. 500 Locust Street, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam wakes up to voices in the living room. Maybe Alex came over for coffee. Sam _hopes_ Dean didn’t drive all night to get here. The excitement Sam feels at the prospect of meeting an angel makes sense, but the dread in the pit of his stomach won’t go away either. 

 _Well_ , Sam thinks to himself as he stares into the abyss of their closet, _only plaid can save you now._  

Sam takes the same barefooted path as the night before, only his brother’s laugh echoes off tile and wood oddly instead of nervously crackling through a tiny cellphone speaker. Dean doesn’t look like he’s driven all night, and he’s _smiling_ over his coffee at Jody while they gossip about Sam’s hair. But the man—the _angel?_ —sitting next to Dean, smiling at Dean, gives Sam the most intense feeling of déjà vu he’s ever felt. 

“Woah, glitch in the matrix.” 

“I know right? It’s trippy. G’morning to you too, by the way.” 

Jody’s got morning kisses and coffee for him and yeah, it is a pretty good morning. Sam is feeling surprisingly good for having been woken up at three A.M. Upon seeing their strange visitor, there’s no more excitement or dread. Just that strange sense that he ought to know this guy, and doesn’t. 

“How are you here now? Even you can’t drive that fast.” 

“We flew angel express. Which is awful by the way, we’re never doing that again.” The last bit is aimed at Dean’s traveling partner. “Check the driveway even—no car!” 

At a loss for what else to do, Sam checks out the window. It fits with the time they got here, and how Dean’s obviously slept at least somewhat in the past 24 hours. Everything checks out, other than the part where they’ve likely broken laws of physics. They’ve never really been a fan of laws anyway. 

Sam turns to face Dean’s angel. He’s a little more Constantine than anything Sam expected, but it feels right. He knows this person, or should know him, or they’ve met before. But Sam’s never seen this man before in his life. He grinds his teeth and walks over. He’s not going to figure anything out standing around his front window staring into his empty yard. 

"Hi, I'm-" Sam offers his hand to their guest, who takes it in both of his surprisingly warm hands and finishes Sam’s sentence for him. 

"Sam Winchester, yes. It's an honor to meet you.” He looks so incredibly earnest. Sam feels like he should reciprocate or offer the guy something in return. He tries to smile and shake his head a little at the same time. 

Before he can come up with anything reasonable to say, Dean supplies part of the answer. "Again.” 

"Yes, again—I can, sort of, explain. This isn’t the first time we’ve met,” Cas says, which both explains a lot and doesn’t tell Sam anything. 

Dean does a terrible job of summarizing whatever it is that “Cas”—odd name for an angel—explained to him last night. Something about time travel and gates in Heaven just like the ones in Hell that they slammed shut years ago. 

Once Dean and Cas finish their disjointed summary everyone lapses into awkward silence. Sam hasn’t seen his brother face-to-face in almost two years, and it’s hard to remember what he’s supposed to say. Jody gracefully saves them all by announcing that she’s got to get to work.

“Y’all stay here. I can manage without you for a day. No one’s working on anything super serious and I think between Garth and Kate that werewolf case in Colorado is just about wrapped up, so I think we’ll be good.” 

Dean clears his throat. “I was thinking maybe I’d go in with Jody. Let you two figure out the quantum physics or whatever. I wanna check out a few things in the library, and that way she’ll have a hand if she needs one. Besides, I didn’t really understand all of it the first time, I don’t think listening a second time will help.” 

Dean wants to go in and look things up, but he doesn’t want to bring some unknown being into the bunker. They have an official rule about that now, after that last time with the djinn. He also doesn’t want to leave Cas anywhere alone. 

Sam is sure Cas understands this too, but the excuses sound less harsh. Cas looks a bit forlorn anyway. 

“Sounds like a plan. Don’t leave books all over my library,” Sam says, teasing. 

“You know your organization makes no sense.” 

“Whatever.” 

“Cas, I’ll be back. I mean, uhm,” Dean seems to be at a loss for words. If that’s the fallout of angels showing up, maybe it’s not so bad, “If you hurt my brother, I’ll hunt you down. But I’m kinda hoping you guys figure everything out so that we can fix it, yeah?” 

Cas nods, and Dean jumps at Jody’s insistence that he “get his ass in gear or swear to god she’ll leave him and his handsome elbows home with the rest of the boy band.” 

Cas’ question about what makes elbows handsome turns Sam’s smirk into gales of laughter. 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 10:30 AM. 500 Locust Street, Lebanon, KS.**

In some ways, talking to Sam is much simpler than it is with Dean. It might just be that Sam’s always believed in angels, or that Sam is more receptive and willing to listen to a new problem. 

It might also be that the man’s learned so much from each of his own mistakes that he’s willing to listen to anyone else’s story prior to judging them. 

Cas _had_ convinced himself that Sam and Dean were happier without him. Dean may or may not have been, it’s hard to tell when he tries so hard to keep himself in a pit of despair. Freeing Dean from the Mark of Cain and the machinations of destiny weren’t enough. Sam, on the other hand, is truly _happier_ now. Sam sits at ease in his living room without the fallout of an angelic civil war weighing on his every thought and action. 

And therefore, it’s a much harder story to tell Sam. There’s no good way to say ‘ _You were not the only casualty of our grand plan but you were definitely one of the most abused puppets.’_ Cas wishes he never learned what it meant to be apologetic. It would be simpler. 

Sam’s face belies each of his attempts to slot part of the story into his own corrupted recollections. Cas thought it would take all day to tell the tale. It seems like such a big thing, but he ties the last threads of the story barely an hour later.

“You see, this spell did the opposite of Metatron’s false trials. We were whole again, in every bit of our angelic glory. The differences between us fell away in our triumph, because we were home, and it all felt _so right_. The knowledge that I was what and who and where I was always meant to be—” Cas pauses, and clenches both his hands. He sucks in a deep breath of the air that’s so uniquely _Earth atmosphere_ before continuing, “It was euphoric. Heavenly.” Cas pauses again. 

“That sounds like the opposite of a problem,” Sam says. 

 _Sam can’t help with anything if he doesn’t know._ “It came with a price. Everything my brothers and sisters used to be is being taken from them, little by little. They have no more hopes, no more aspirations. They’re all _there_ , but they aren’t who they were before—they’re just empty. I suppose it’s hard to go anywhere or cause any trouble if you don’t even want to try. Wings aren’t much use when you’re tethered; they’re even less use when you don’t want to go anywhere. _I don’t want to end up like that_. But even more, if there’s a way to help my family, I have to save them.” 

Cas holds Sam’s eyes with his plea. Sam knows what it’s like to want to save family. It’s the best appeal Cas knows how to make. 

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell what Sam’s thinking behind the mask he’s put up. The only clue Cas gets is the slight shift of his jaw as Sam grinds his teeth before opening his mouth. 

Sam asks impersonal diagnostic questions, starting with, “How long did it take? Is there anything left or have they all been mindless zombie angels for seven years already?” 

“There’s still something there, but I don’t know how long it took. At first I didn’t realize anything was out of place. There was a blank spot in my memory for the few days before and after Dean finished the spell. The other angels were affected the same way, though in hindsight I’m not sure how many of them even realized there’d been a change…” Cas trails off, disturbed by where Sam’s question leads his thoughts. “I realized there was a _serious_ problem roughly a year after we shut the gates.” 

“How has that affected the human souls residing in Heaven?” Sam continues.

“The human souls are fine. More than that, some of them are doing quite well. Bobby Singer asked me to knock some sense into both of you—he meant it in a kind way, though.” Bobby had been happy to help Cas. 

Sam’s shoulders fall and his face softens. 

“Bobby, huh.” Sam’s features return to normal before he continues with his next question: “So the humans in Heaven remember you guys, but not the ones on Earth?” Sam asks dubiously. 

Cas rubs his hands across his knees, before shrugging. “Human brains hold thoughts and memories differently than their souls do.” 

Sam nods shortly and continues his interrogation: “Why was history not rewritten when the angels were yanked out of it? Like, the butterfly effect. Shouldn’t stuff change?” 

Cas doesn’t have a good answer. “The spells were a failsafe, so my best guess is that it was designed, like most of the cogs at work in Heaven, to cover God’s ass. Better for everyone not to remember angels if they get so bad they need to be shut up forever, right?” Which gets a snort out of Sam. “Time is immutable. ’Stuff’ is hard to change. Human minds are easy.” 

“If angels were supposed to be shut up forever, how did _you_ escape?” 

“I had help. Bobby and some of your other friends, they figured out where and how human souls were ascending from the Veil into Heaven. Ash—you know Ash right?” Sam nods, and Cas continues, “He says the angels look like pieces of a big weird puzzle, but he hasn’t figured out anything beyond that. I guess I don’t quite fit, so I didn’t get locked into place quite like everyone else.” Cas is broken. He always has been. That doesn’t stop the small smile that comes with his next statement. “I can fly again, though. Whatever other consequences of the spell, I think it’s trying to fix us. It put us back in Heaven, it made us whole, it freed any human souls possessed by an angel. Not all the effects are bad, but the spell certainly wasn’t gentle with us.” 

Sam shivers when Cas mentions possession. The rest of his questions are no easier to answer. When Sam finally stops, Cas feels drained, and more than a little hopeless.

“Cas, I wish I knew anything. As it stands we’ll have to hope Dean found something in the Men of Letters’ library, because we don’t even know what to do with one angel, much less all of them. And after what you said, I’m not sure that if we did remember you, we’d want to help you.” Cas thinks that’s probably true. 

Sam rubs his face, before asking the thing Dean avoided last night: “So is there a way?”

“To return your memories to you?” 

“Yeah. Or to just, unbury them from the bits that have been written over. Maybe our souls have the memories? I mean, I keep feeling like I should know everything you’re saying—it really does _feel_ right. And I listen to—and tell—a lot of stories, I don’t know why yours should be any different. By all rights neither of us should have given you the time of day. But if what you’re saying is true….well. It’d just be nicer to know that in my own head, rather than take it on…” 

“Faith,” Cas finishes the sentence, when Sam trails off. The word is foreign in Cas’ mouth, where it ought to be easy. “I’m not sure. I can try? I have the ability to heal some wounds, physical, psychological, and spiritual.” He pauses before adding, “For you, in this case, I would rather not.” 

Sam’s face turns hard, judging. Cas deserves this look, just as he deserves their lack of acknowledgement. He wants them to remember everything, but he’s sure that’s only because then he won’t be responsible for any decisions made. Or he thinks he’s sure. Maybe it would be best for them though, and they prefer making their own decisions anyway. They’ve always preferred pain and knowledge to ignorance and safety. 

That doesn’t stop Cas from wanting to shelter them from that. 

It had been so simple to bury the ties to Sam and Dean he’d had, to accept what was, and to just be one angel among many in an every increasingly impotent heavenly host. The Winchesters had softened around the edges in the years he’d been away. They’d been allowed to _really live_ with no memories of the angel-related horrors that were thrust upon them when they were younger. It was why even though he’d been able to come to Earth for over two years, and he’d even given in and briefly visited, he hadn’t wanted to do _this_. They both deserved to fit more easily into life. 

Sam’s demeanor with Cas isn’t hostile the way Dean’s was, but the formality with which he’d conducted their discussion leaves Cas wanting the open arms and friendly teasing Sam would’ve offered years ago. They don’t remember him, and they don’t seem to like him all that much. There’s no more easy familial camaraderie. _Or was that something that Cas had earned?_ He knows objectively that it hasn’t always been the case. He has trouble remembering the Winchesters as distant or as perturbed with him as they are with him today. 

Objectively, he thinks, every reason he has to seek out their help can be ignored in favor of a simple maxim about how being _with_ the Winchesters is preferable to being _without_ them any longer. Especially as he watches everything that he’s ever identified with outside of them disappear. 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 12:30 PM. 500 Locust Street, Lebanon, KS.**

“Hey, uh, Cas?” After a minute or so of dazed silence, Sam starts to worry about his strange houseguest. “You still with us?”

Consternation and lines of confusion leave cracks when Cas’ eyes widen with fear as he shakes himself out of the trance he’s in.

“You disappeared there for a bit. Everything alright?” 

“I—I didn’t intend to go anywhere. I was just thinking—” 

“Yeah, that’s what I meant. You checked out, mentally. Is that the sort of thing that’s plaguing your buddies?” Their own problems aside, there’s still a case to figure out. Maybe if they fix this guy’s problems, they’ll be able to get him to do the memory thing he was talking about. Or at least, Sam thinks, he can figure out which of Cas’ buttons to push to get the guy to do it. Dean had said something about a sword—but the less-bloody way is _usually_ better. 

“Yes, in a way. I’m not sure how it would translate to human interactions, but, my siblings stop _shifting_ , they collapse on their wavefunctions for a beat, and each time it happens they seem to _lose_ something. It’s a ridiculous notion, but when I see it happen it always looks like they’re being synchronized to… to something.” The way Cas puts his head in his hands seems way more human than angelic, which clashes a bit with how he talks of his species as quantum physics concepts. 

Sam just nods dumbfoundedly, as if it explains everything. 

“I don’t want to be assimilated. And I don’t want that for the rest of them either.”

“That uh, sounds like a pretty shitty way to go.” 

“I’m not looking forward to it,” Cas says quietly. 

Sam overcomes the urge to pat a grown-looking man on the head, and tell him everything will be all right. 

“C’mon, we’ve been talking all morning and it’s way past lunchtime. What d’you say we go find food, and then go ruin Dean’s afternoon?” 

“I don’t want to ruin anyone’s afternoon.” _Nah, but it’s okay for you to show up at someone’s house in the middle of the night_ , thinks Sam with a smirk. _This one’s got some gaps in cognitive processing._

“Oh, c’mon, it’ll be fun. We’ll tell him you’re losing your mind, and not really an angel, and that he’s been doing research all morning for nothing.” _Who knows, if we’re lucky it might even be true._

 

* * *

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 2:00 PM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Dean had, in fact, not been doing research all morning. Then again, Sam should have figured that would happen. Dean had been so wound up about the angel thing, and so really Sam shouldn’t be surprised to find him entangled in someone else’s case when they got to the bunker. The pause to shoot a glare at them (that clearly said _why’d you bring him here?_ ) was all they got from Dean for a few more hours. 

Sam and Cas set themselves to searching through the books Dean had obviously ignored. 

Dean’s angel seems pretty useful in this regard, at least. Cas goes immediately to the bookshelf noting, “You’ve moved your books around, but I think I understand the new system of organization.” He deftly searches through and pulls out the ones he knows contain angel lore.

It takes Cas barely a minute before Sam is holding a dusty leather-bound volume. 

“This one’s a bit, erm, hyperbolic. But it’s been useful… before…” Cas’s explanation subsides as he turns back to frown at the bookshelves. “There was another, let’s see.” 

Sam thinks Cas is probably talking to the books, so he drops the one in his hands onto the nearest table with an encouragingly loud bang. By the time he looks up again, there are two new books sitting opposite him on the table, and Cas has moved to another shelf. 

They don’t talk much, but they don’t need to: they work together well all the same. The gentle background hum of the bunker accompanies their search, punctuated every once in awhile by Dean’s raised voice. From what Sam can tell, he’s on the line with the _actual_ F.B.I., trying to track down some strange details of an old case. Cas’s just set another book on Sam’s stack when Dean pokes his head through the door, hand over his phone’s mouthpiece, to rudely mouth “So?” in Cas’ general direction. Sam barely has time to gesture back, pointing at his stack of books, before Dean is walking away again. “As I was _just telling_ your agent, sir,...” gets eaten up by his retreating footfalls. Oh, the joys of dealing with bureaucratic administration. Cas doesn’t seem to have quite made it back to his bookshelf either, standing in the middle of the room and frowning in Dean’s general direction. Something kickstarts him back into motion though, and they work again for a bit. 

When Sam finishes poring through the first book, Cas comes over to check out the sticky-noted pages. 

“I didn’t see much that looked pertinent, but...” he starts, without much intention to finish, as Cas sits down opposite him at the table. 

“Thank you, Sam,” Cas’ voice is grave, although his attention quickly turns back to the book. 

Dean’s second interruption consists purely of boredom, villainy, strange faces, and the tinny sound of fuzzy hold music on speakerphone clattering across the quiet library. It’s distracting, and Sam makes a show of rolling his eyes, clapping his hands over his ears and determinedly paying attention only to the book in front of him. Across the table, Cas seems to be having more difficulty. To his credit, he keeps his broken-looking visage facing forward, not giving Dean the satisfaction. It’s well done. 

Sam gets through two more of his books before realizing that Cas has been staring at the same page for half an hour. He unfolds himself from his chair, stretches, and leans over the table to see more clearly. 

“Find something good?” he asks, but gets no response. 

“Cas?” Sam asks again, this time gently tapping on the open book page. 

Cas tilts his head to the side, but it’s empty eyes that don’t seem to focus that face Sam. “Yes?” 

“Did you find something?” 

“Yes?” Cas sounds hopeful, but looks confused. Slowly, he shakes his head. “No. This book is minorly insightful, but contains no particular solutions.” With a sigh, he closes the tome. 

It’s been bugging Sam, so he asks, “You claim angels were removed from human history, but we’ve still got angels in our bibles, and in our artwork, and our fiction. How come?”

“Ah yes, because what your lore calls ‘angels’ so very accurately depicts us,” Cas raises an eyebrow. 

Sam shifts his focus wholly to Cas, but he’s not sure if he’s supposed to laugh in response or not. 

Cas’ eyes follow his head in an arc before continuing, “From what little I’ve observed, the spell literally removed angels from _living human memory_. Your books were left untouched—but no one’s going to believe that angels are any more real than vampires, or werewolves, or ghosts.” 

Cas inspects the shelves in the room once more in a sweeping glance before he asks Sam if there are any books in the downstairs vaults. Sam waves him out. The guy seems to know his way around, he’s _probably_ not gonna cause too much more trouble than they’re already dealing with. 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 4:30 PM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam’s got the next book in his pile open when Dean walks in. Without Cas around, he doesn’t even lower his voice as he sits down with Sam, leans his elbows on the table, and reads from his notepad the information he’d finally gotten from the FBI to the hunter who’d called that morning. 

“Yeah you just make sure it’s the green one, and that’ll do it. But if that don’t work, you call right back, okay? — No, I think it’ll work, yeah, let me know. G’night, Stace.” 

Leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, Dean lets out a long breath. “I think she’s gonna be alright.” 

“Life or death huh?” Sam asks. 

“Ghost,” Dean grunts out, sitting up straight in the chair, and looking around as if he just realized the library were short by one expected occupant. 

Sam cuts him off before he can ask with wave at the stack of books he’s got sitting in front of him. 

“So did you even look before you let someone’s call for help distract you?” 

“Well, I did walk in here y’know. Before I realized…” Dean mumbles out something that sounds a lot like “ _forgot my reading glasses up in Sioux Falls_ ” but Sam only smirks a little. And clears his throat. 

“Uh huh.” 

“So, you find anything?” Sam notices a bit less tension on Dean’s face than there’d been that morning, and maybe even less than there’s been for a few years now. Feeling useful is a good look on Dean. Or maybe just being able to avoid the problem in favor of something he’s able to do. Dean works better on momentum and action, problems he can get his hands on. Until they figure something to act on—well, Sam feels similarly held back. There’s not much that can be done with a _complete lack of knowledge._

“Yeah we got nothin’ helpful. I mean, there’s a bunch of recipes for how to fuck with angels in this one,” Sam points at the book Cas had been staring so intently at. “We could try something on him, if he’s really an angel, there’s some in there that’d mess him up pretty good.”

“I’m not sure how that’s any more helpful than seeing giant shadow wings,” Dean says. “Anything throwing around as much power as he is’ll be able to mimic anything that book says.” 

"The only other thing I could think of with that much power was faeries, but he didn't even flinch when I spilled salt all over ‘accidentally,’” Sam uses air quotes, “while he was telling me about our so-called life.” 

"Heh, you did that too huh?"

They fall into an easy, contemplative silence. 

Sam hesitates to tell Dean the next part, but he’s not going to be able to avoid it forever. They need a way forward, and Sam decided a long time ago that he was done with all the lies. Lying has always been easy as breathing; facing a thing head-on is what’s hard. Time to test out his hypothesis on how to have functional adult sibling relationships. Sam grits his teeth. 

“He did say something about a way he could, not restore our memories, but to transfer his own memories to us. Except he got all weird about transferring memories to me. I dunno. Sounds like a way we could know more, but it could be a trap or some kinda mind control thing.” 

Dean considers, but not for very long. “Huh. Well that’s something, at least.” 

“You think we should try it? Or, you should. If he’s willing to share them with you.” _But not me._ Maybe there are just a few words that are better unspoken, Sam figures. 

“Sam, I don’t know what we should try. Part of me wants to throw the guy out and never see him again.” There’s fear there, a chord of it in Dean’s voice, a crease in his forehead. 

“But you still need to know.” 

“Yeah.” 

Maybe the consistent feeling of having forgotten something important is a curse. It’s plenty unpleasant. Sam makes a note on his phone (so he doesn’t forget) to look it up later. 

“Is it dinner time yet? I’m starved.” Both Winchesters look up to see Jody in the doorway smiling at them. “You guys will figure it out. You want me to get angelboy out of your hair for a bit? I could make him help me get food. Or are you done with your super-secret planning session?” 

Jody’s hands feel good running through Sam’s hair, and he shuts the book he’s hasn’t paid more than cursory attention to for a while now. “Nah, I’m gonna come with. There’s nothing new I’m going to figure out. Dean’s been avoiding the books all day, maybe he’ll find something I missed.” He smiles sweetly at his brother, and then jostles Jody a bit as he gets out of the chair that’s molded to his butt. 

“Hurry up, I want to leave before Dean starts whining.”

“All right; all right.”

 

* * *

**Cas - October 27, 2023. 5:15 PM. Basement Archives, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

The soggy taste of books lingers in Cas’ mouth until his grace re-engages properly with the human brain structure of his vessel. Each sensation of flavor gets superseded by concise determination of chemical constituents. Cas takes the stairs slowly, and almost collides with a young person in the hallway. 

 _Alex,_ his memory supplies instantaneously, though Cas isn’t sure what he can do with that information at the moment. He keeps moving forward. 

Dean’s voice greets him when he enters the library: “Nothing good down there?”

“Nothing that immediately stands out to me. I should go through it all more carefully. You have things down there even I did not know existed.” If any of the labels on the boxes are to be believed. “Where did Sam go?”

“He and Jody went out to get dinner. Hope you like vegetables on your pizza.” 

Dean looks up from the book he's holding at arm's length, and rubs the squint out of his eyes to focus them on Cas. The well-lit library barely belies the passage of time, with no clear view of the outside world. The books scattered at their worktable say enough. 

Cas realizes that he must have been gone for longer than the few minute of casual browsing he remembers doing. He wants to demand answers: exactly how long was he downstairs, what does Dean know, why are Dean’s eyes broken and why has Dean been avoiding him; but that would be selfish, and he stands on the edge of the room instead. Cas reminds himself, too, this isn’t about himself—it’s about saving his extended family in Heaven, and helping them because pretty much no one else will.

Dean stares at Cas fully for long enough to take the full measure of him. Cas is a case that needs solving, and Dean’s a fair hand at reading people. Cas has some of those human tells now, it’s been years since he started picking up human mannerisms. But still, Dean shouldn’t be able to read him. Only—only it feels like all the wrong things to say are on display. 

Afraid of giving himself away, Cas remains completely still. Dean watches. When Cas finally shifts his weight to take a step into the room, Dean raises a single eyebrow. Cas hesitates again. Dean pushes himself back from the table and stretches with only minimal joint-crackling before looking again over at Cas and deflating. 

When Cas still doesn’t move, Dean shakes his head and crosses the room to stand just near enough to touch. 

“You gotta give us more to go on if we’re gonna help you,” Dean says, quieter now. More intimate. “Sam said something about you sticking memories into our heads? Why is that not a good idea?”

“Dean.” Cas tries to take the painful edge out of his voice before continuing. “The last time I…altered…your brother’s head, I caused an incredible amount of trouble and pain. I’m more than a little reticent to repeat that.” 

Dean’s visibly bristled. “And I’m still supposed to help you? Tell me how that makes any sense, ‘cause I’m trying to figure it out and I can’t.” 

Cas shakes his head a little but stays silent, knowing there’s nothing he can do to change the past, and little he can ever do to change Dean’s feelings. 

“Do me.” 

Cas' shoulders sink and he can feel his eyes pinch with confusion. Dean, eyes still focused on Cas, clarifies before Cas has a chance to guess what Dean wants from him. 

“Hypothetically, you’d be willing to inject your memories into my head—just not Sam’s.” 

“I would be more comfortable with that. Yes.” 

Dean scratches his scalp, dubiously, and ducks his head. The timbre of his voice turns self-deprecating as he says, “Heh. It’s not like I’ve got much in my head you can mess up.” 

The slight shake of negation that Cas’ head makes must catch Dean’s eye, because Cas finds himself the center of Dean’s attention again. 

No more hesitancy, no more confusion. “Okay. First you’re gonna tell me how come, if you broke Sam’s head, he’s okay now. Because from the story you told before, we only lost our memories of you. Not the consequences. Then we’re gonna eat. If, after all that, I haven’t decided to kick you out or kill you, you’ll share your memories with me.” 

“Okay.” 

“You might wanna start now, you’ve got maybe 10 minutes ‘til the pizza gets here and your story better not take longer than that.” 

Cas looks upward out of habit, but the action provides answers as empty as comfort. 

“I made grave errors in judgements,” Cas starts. “Judgements which I shouldn’t have ever been making; there are reasons why angels don’t regularly enact freedom of choice. Perhaps they shouldn’t. I still haven’t got an answer to that, and no one answers my prayers.” _Except you. Even though you cannot possibly hear them._

“I’d like to believe I learned a lesson. When I came... back to my life, back to my senses, I wasn’t able to heal the wounds in your brother’s psyche that I’d allowed to take hold. Perhaps you will remember Sam was staying in a mental ward?” Dean nods. Cas wonders if the points like this where the stories match up make various truths easier or harder to believe. 

“Because I couldn’t heal him, I shifted his mental and spiritual anguish into myself. It was the only thing I could think to do.” Cas finishes, somewhat lamely. Then adds, more quietly, “Sam is my friend. I don’t want anyone to hurt him that way, ever again. Especially me.”

And then, turning to face Dean directly, “I have made one poor decision after another since meeting you. I regret very little of it. I’ve made bad decisions with and without your advice. How am I supposed to let you decide whether or not to take on the misery of all the memories you’ve lost, when you don’t remember it? I’d rather see you happy. I think,” Cas thinks of a time when Dean _told him,_ he’d rather take the pain and guilt, “I think you’d rather know, and that you’d rather make your own decisions. Both of you. I just don’t want to re-deal that damage to you.”

“You fucked up, you hurt us, but you actually like us,” Dean frowns and nods as he continues, “That’s one of the most believable things I’ve heard you say. What I don’t get is why memories of _angels_ is what’s going to cause us all sorts of pain and suffering. Aren’t you supposed to be the good guys?”

“The majority of the worst things that have happened in your life can probably be traced back to one angel or another. We’re not _good guys_. We’re a bit like hunters. We were told we had a job to do. Sometimes—much of the time—we do greater amounts of harm than we help. It’s probably for the best if you turn me down. The angels will fade away. It’s really not so bad.” Cas never quite got the hang of faking a smile. “I shouldn’t have come. I appreciate the time you’ve taken for me. It’s been a treat, to see you again—” _before I forgot you, too._

Dean reaches for Cas’ shoulder, but his hand stops before it gets there. Instead he says, “Don’t do that, we haven’t even gotten to the part where you try to break my brain yet. You can apologize after, okay?” 

“So you...want that.” 

“Yeah, sure. Pain, suffering, sounds like a bunch of fun,” Dean’s sarcasm hides part of the uncertainty in his voice, but not all of it. “It’s just memories right? It’s not like it’ll change me, right?” 

“I suppose. Everything that happened, has happened. Whether you remember or not.”

“So, no weird alternate timelines and parallel universes?” Dean asks, but doesn’t give Cas a chance to respond. “So what’s it feel like, to get someone else’s memories? Have you done it before?” 

“I was given a repository of pop culture facts.” Cas pauses, but is uncomfortable with the silence, “It was highly disorienting.” 

“Can you erase memories too?” Dean asks. 

“Yes, I can do that.” 

“So if it all goes terribly, you could just do that—c’mon man, you’re worrying about something you can fix. Let’s just, figure out what’s wrong with all your angel pals, and if we don’t like the memories, you can take them back. Easy-peasy.” 

“I see no way for peas to affect the outcome,” Cas tries, but gets blank confusion instead of the smile he hoped for. He can’t fathom a single hypothetical case in which this would be _easy_. Letting Dean decide makes it feel more comfortable though; more right. 

 

* * *

**Cas - October 27, 2023. 6:00 PM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas isn’t sure what he thinks of olives on a pizza, it all sort of tastes the same to him. Listening to Dean and Sam banter, and watching Jody berate and build up both of them feels like intruding in a world he doesn’t belong. Jody introduces her daughter Alex to Cas when she joins them long enough to pile a plate with the few remaining slices of pizza. She gives Dean and Cas a wide berth, and Cas gets the distinct impression she wouldn’t care that they’d met before. 

Alex hurries down the hall after the sound of a ringing phone, and Sam tells Cas proudly about the network of hunters they’ve set up in the last few years. Jody, Sam and Alex, “do what Bobby used to do, but with better resources,” in Sam’s words. “We’ve got this amazing hub here for communication and networking, and there’s probably more stuff in the books that we haven’t had a chance to read or search through yet than the stuff we have. Which isn’t even touching on the stuff hoarded in the basement! But we’ll get there.” 

The bunker resonates with purpose, and for the first time since he’s been back, Cas lets himself _feel_ the building in its entirety. The old spells still protect the place, and every one of the plentiful incoming and outgoing signals scramble through the complex shields and reinforce them. Like the siren pull of Heaven’s curse, there’s a feeling of _belonging_ in this building, stronger than it was when the Winchesters had only just unsealed it. Dean’s chipmunk face full of food, Sam’s flannel shirt and gentle hand rubbing Jody’s shoulder, and the low conversation Alex is having on the phone with someone about different ways to get or make holy water all speak to Cas of _belonging_ too. He wonders if he could make the connections and reconnections necessary to have a home like this one. It had almost been true before, _why not now?_ But with little time and less hope, Cas lets himself enjoy the moment for what it is. 


	3. A Rip in Reality

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 6:15 PM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

It's been years since Sam has seen his brother smile quite so freely. He even argues about urban legend ethics with Kate and Garth when they stumble in looking for a warm bed for the night on their way back to Wisconsin. While they devour the last few slices of pizza, Dean tries to drag Cas into it. Cas stays quiet for the most part, and doesn’t finish even his first piece of pizza, but he doesn’t look put off. Everyone’s a little on edge, but somehow dinner’s not a disaster. 

When they’re done eating, Dean and Sam let Jody have a turn at interrogating Cas while they clean up, and their werewolf friends sack out for the night. If anything, Cas looks a little frightened to be left alone with her. Sam figures that’s actually a really good sign. 

“So uh, you guys gonna magic yourselves back to Sioux Falls tonight, or should we put new sheets on the guest bed? I figure you can take the couch, and that way we’ll know if _he_ ,” Sam folds up a pizza box small enough to fit it into the garbage can and nods his head in the general direction of the library, “decides to walk out or something odd.” 

“Dude, Cas _teleported_ us here, I don’t think sleeping on the couch would help. And I think I’d rather stay here tonight. Unless you already converted my room into storage?” Dean shakes water off his hands into the sink, and tries drying them on a damp dish towel before giving up and just rubbing them on his pants. 

“Oh. Yeah. No, we haven’t touched that room yet. Only let people stay in there once or twice when the other room we kept was in use. Kate usually crashes in front of the TV when she comes through here; and you might wanna grab a clean set of sheets. But you’re okay with—with staying here? With _him_? This morning you didn’t seem to want him to come here, now it’s okay?” 

Dean slowly shakes his head from side to side. 

“I dunno Sammy. It’s probably all wrong. But I think we’ll be fine. I think I uh, might’ve made progress with him on the brain-zapping memory-thing front, and I think I might really be able to help with this thing. What’s the worst that could happen?” Dean’s raised eyebrow and outspread hands provoke a similarly ludicrous face out of Sam. “Besides, we’ve been in your hair all day long. Take Jody home. Get some peace of mind. Maybe that’ll help more than anything else.” 

“Yeah, fine.” 

And Sam does just that, once Jody agrees.

As Jody’s grabbing her jacket, Sam listens to Dean tell Cas awkwardly that, “There’s only one bed left and uhm-”

“I don’t need a bed, I don’t sleep.” 

“Right. Well. That solves that.” 

At which point Sam takes pity on their awkward conversation. “You guys behave yourselves, okay?” he says with a shit-eating grin. Sometimes it’s fun to be the _responsible_ one. “And call me if you need anything.” 

“Even at three A.M. again?”

“Yeah, even then.” 

Jody comes back in time to roll her eyes at them and drag Sam out the door. 

“He’ll be fine you know, he’s a big boy now. All grown up and everything.” She tells Sam. 

“I know, it’s just that he…” 

“Yeah, I get it.” And Sam is so glad to have someone there who, he really believes, does get it. 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 8:30 PM. Jody's 2021 Ford Bronco, Lebanon, KS.**

As she drives them home, Sam watches the lines of thought change on Jody’s face. She’s got something to say, but he waits (almost) patiently for her to decide when to say it. The seats in Jody’s new Bronco sit a little too close and a little too far apart, but it’s comfortable and Sam feels safe. The sound of pavement under four wheels calms Sam. Sitting in the passenger seat of a car _always_ feels secure, even if it’s an illusion _. A car can’t save someone from bad decisions._

It’s not until they’re parked in the garage with the engine off (but the keys still in the ignition) that Jody decides it’s time to talk. 

“Are you worried because your brother thinks he found an angel, or because angels might exist, or because, no matter how sober he seems, we just left him behind with ‘ _Cas_ ’ alone?” she asks. 

Sam sucks in a breath at the last part. “How about d) all of the above.” 

“I know we’ve had part of this conversation already, but you know what? I’m glad he went up to Sioux Falls. I admit, it was nice to know my house wasn’t sitting up there empty, and I’m really glad he started fixing up the salvage yard.” Jody pauses as the engine ticks a few times, cooling off. Sam knows better than to say anything yet, because she’s not done, but even though they’ve talked about this before, it’s nice to hear the reminder. 

“But I’m glad he’s here now. I’m glad Dean’s here _with a purpose_.” Jody emphasizes the last word with the slap of her palms onto the steering wheel. “It’s nice to see him doing something he thinks he’s supposed to be doing, I guess.” 

“I think,” and Sam pauses just long enough to lean over and set his hand across Jody’s thigh, “that you’re right. But if it’s not one thing, it’s another. And if he goes and lets this guy who just showed up in his house last night blast his head open because it gives him _purpose_ or whatever…” Sam shakes his head. “Angels. I mean, what the Hell.” 

Jody lets her eyebrows raise just enough to tease, but instead of taking the bait quite yet, Sam crumples. 

“Something about this scares me, and I don’t know if I’m more worried about the things I do know or the ones I don’t.” He looks up from the dash where his eyes have fixated, “And thanks so much for putting up with us today. You’re a saint, and I love you.” 

Jody’s face settles for squinting somewhere between bemused and embarrassed. 

“Get out of my car, Winchester.” 

“Yes ma’am.” 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 27, 2023. 8:45 PM. 500 Locust Street, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam makes it as far as getting his key into the lock before being accosted one final time, with a firm slap to his left buttock. 

“And that’s all the worrying you’re allowed to do for tonight. You got your heart-to-heart emotional conversation—” 

“You started-”

“You got your talk so now you’re all mine,” Jody demands.

There’s not much Sam can say to that. 

Somewhere between the peanut-butter Oreos (he’s gotta find out where Jody hides those) and being dragged to bed, Sam mostly forgets his worries. He likes his life, it’s pretty awesome. Crazy brothers and sexy partners included, and the former is just going to have to wait ‘til tomorrow. 

 

* * *

**Cas - October 27, 2023. 9:00 PM. Dean's Bedroom, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

“Hold still,” Cas says. It seems only right to say something in this situation, though it doesn’t matter whether Dean holds still or not. A simple, clinical touch of Cas’ fore- and middle-fingers misses Dean’s temple entirely and instead the pads of each of Cas’ fingers slide down the side of Dean’s face. Dean blinks into the onslaught of new memories. 

Now Dean _knows everything_. Cas attempts to draw his hand away from Dean’s face, but Dean’s sudden grasp on his forearm interrupts the motion. 

“Don’t go anywhere, don’t….don’t run away. Again.” Dean’s eyes shift around, sorting through the memories that must be attempting to mesh with shoddy approximations created by a lack of angels. So Cas stays, and wills the physical contact between them to act as a buoy they can tie themselves up to and never get lost again. 

 

* * *

**Cas - October 27, 2023. 11:30 PM. Dean's Bedroom, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas blinks a few times and automatically catalogs his surroundings. The room is a pastiche of familiar and unfamiliar. Dean’s hunting weapons still line the walls, but his more personal belongings are missing, as if Dean had been torn in half and left this part of himself behind. No records or family photos remain. There are a pile of file folders on the shelf above the bed, and a t-shirt with comic book characters folded neatly on top of the dresser that obviously doesn’t belong to Dean. 

Cas is laying on Dean’s bed. It’s very comfortable, but he should not be lying down anywhere. Or the fact that it’s not the first time he’s noticed time has gone missing—he knows he’s falling apart just like the others. But it’s never been so obvious. 

The slight motion of the bed as Cas breathes out heavily, letting his head tip back on the (very soft) pillow must alert Dean, whose chiding words distract Cas from his thoughts. 

“Thought you said you didn’t sleep.” 

Cas lowers his gaze from a cobweb in the ceiling’s corner, briefly taking in Dean. Dean who’s sitting on the bed, head in his hands. Dean who looks tired and can’t sleep because Cas is in his bed. Cas chooses to stare at his own hands instead. 

“I don’t.” 

“Cas—Castiel, huh? I like ‘Cas’ better-” 

“Me too.” _It’s pretty much the only nice thing you’ve ever called me_. Cas sits up, and contemplates imbibing liquor stores. 

“-but you’ve been affected by this thing too, huh.” It’s such an indirect way to say it; _‘this thing._ ’ Cas pictures Heaven, full of despondent and blank angels, who barely respond even to strong interference. He takes a minute to listen in on all frequencies, but picks up very little outside the photonic ones humans use for communication. Even when no one was there, Heaven’s dissonant songs played most channels in complaint and discussion. Now the celestial version of a dial tone is all Cas can seem to pick out. 

Channel surfing takes less time than the small huff of air takes to leave his lips. 

“I didn’t think I’d given you those memories.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t have to.” There’s notes of almost-apology in his voice, like Dean’s aware it’s one of those secrets they’re not supposed to talk about. “Sam and I are good at playing detective though, we notice things like this. You should already know that though.” 

Dean pauses to massage circles into his temples, before tackling a different difficult subject. 

“Sorry man, this is all,” but instead of using any words, he waves one of his hands around near his head. “Kinda like knowing a thing and not-knowing it at the same time. God, that doesn’t even make sense.” 

The rush of worry that he’s messed up again rushes through Cas like a gamma ray burst. “I should have thought first. I can remove them, or maybe even change the way they’re stored in your head; memories aren’t held the same way in a human brain-” 

“It’s fine,” Dean makes the assertion directly at Cas as if somehow that will make it more true.

Dean’s focus slides off Cas, and caroms around the room before settling on the door. He asks more quietly, “Did you really watch me raking leaves? You….don’t seem to have told me some of these things.” 

Cas shrinks back from Dean, and starts his non-explanation-slash-apology over again; “I gave you everything in my memories that included you or your brother. I can remove those things, I can fix it, I shouldn’t have—” 

“Nah, really. It’s fine.” A smirk twitches briefly across Dean’s lips, but the lines around his eyes sag into a frown before they get the chance to crease. “You might wanna be more careful when you do Sam though.” 

“You still think giving your brother these memories is a good idea?”

“Yeah,” Dean shakes his head slightly. “Although maybe leave out the bits about the devil in his head. I can see why you thought that might be a bad plan. You can pick and choose, right?” 

“Yes, I can. I didn’t want to—well. It seems a bit disingenuous.” 

“Lying’s sort of a thing with us. Sometimes the only thing we’ve got. ” 

Dean lets his face disappear entirely into his hands, leaning down into his knees and sorting mentally through all the stuff cas gave him. “You,” Dean pauses again, and Cas sees him shift through “—killed me? over and over.” 

“Oh.” 

“Oh? That’s all you got to say.” It’s almost a question. 

“I shouldn’t have burdened you with that either. I’m not very good at this, am I?” 

“You could’a said something, y’know? I…think. I feel wrecked, what’d you do anyway, stuff all your feelings into my head alongside the memories?” 

“No, it doesn’t work that way. Human and angel emotions don’t even work the same way, they’re incompatible.” Cas doubts Dean wants to listen to a lecture on polarized emotional vectors and magnitude stretching factors required in conversion magic. It’s not impossible, but it’s a fair bit more delicate a procedure than logical transfers. “Which means that when anything angel-related was purged from your mind, it left your emotions behind. Anything you’re feeling is your own. From my understanding, human minds are quite talented at patterns, I would assume yours is fitting facts back into place where they belong, and assigning the abandoned emotions to them.” 

“You make it sound pretty damn elegant, but it feels like a whole lotta not good. Damn, I could use a drink.” 

“I can ge—” Cas is cut off before he even has the chance to offer. 

“No don’t. You’re not worth my sobriety.” The words start out rough and round off into emptiness. “Look, Cas, maybe you should go,” Dean huffs out, “I need to get some sleep.” 

“Okay,” Cas says. He’s not sure what outcome he was expecting, and really it could have been so much worse. Maybe that would have felt like a real answer though. Cas gets near to the room’s old wooden door before the bed murmurs quietly under Dean’s shifting weight. He turns back to Dean at the echo of feet off the cold smooth floor. 

“We used to have this recliner. It was a hideous, kinda yellow? Sam found it on sale. I don’t know if they got rid of it, but that one’s the comfiest,” Dean pauses, and Cas lets out the air stuck in his swollen chest. Dean doesn’t want him to _leave_ leave. It’s almost a blessing. “And, and if you go out, just, come back in the morning okay? We’ll figure it out. We always have, right?” 

“Yes,” and the word almost doesn’t rasp. “Dean. Goodnight.” 

“G’night, Cas.” 

 

* * *

**Cas - October 28, 2023. 12:01 AM. Den, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

The coveted recliner does look fantastic, but it’s also occupied by what appears to be a very cozy werewolf. Cas isn’t sure he wants to stay, though. He expands himself, a system of variant energies, first through Lebanon, then all of Kansas, and through most of the central midwest. After a fraction of a second, a small 24-hour diner off of I-80 pings his interest, and everything he is coalesces on the nodal interference point that had expanded to just outside the diner doors by the time he’s fully there. He likes the muffled clatter of dishes and watching people at places like this. The warmth transferring from a mug of terrible coffee to his hands feels like a tow rope connecting him to reality. 


	4. Interlude: July 19, 2016

The night before the final trials will be completed, Dean takes Cas out to a bar. They’ve got traditions to keep, and all. 

“So, Cas, last night on Earth. Any plans?” Dean tries to keep the quip lighthearted, but he can feel his exterior crumbling. The Mark is hungry, and there’s nothing Dean wants here but Cas. 

Cas smiles awkwardly, “I thought I’d just sit here drinking, with you.” 

Dean wants to ask him to stay. Wonders if he’d say yes. Wonders if it’d even work, if Cas could give up his grace, his angelic life, his family… And knows he’d never ask it. 

Dean’s life won’t be that long anyway. With any luck, Cas will still remember him when he dies. Maybe if you’ve got angel buddies you can get hall passes in Heaven. That could be alright, really. 

Cas sips at his beer quietly, and Dean does more watching than he does drinking. The side effects of the Trial-in-progress take a lot of edge off the Mark, but he still wants, and needs. Dean tells himself it’s the damned Mark, but he knows that’s not it at all. 

“Hey,” Dean says, with a light touch to Cas’ elbow. “What’d you say we go...go. Somewhere,” Dean runs out of words. 

Cas doesn’t look phased by Dean’s fumbling at all. 

“Okay.” 

Dean swallows heavily instead of pushing Cas up against the Impala’s passenger-side door. 

He drives faster than he should, and plays music loud enough to drown out the road, if not his thoughts. 

When the tape reaches the end, he doesn’t flip it over. 

“So. Heaven. No more cars, huh.” 

“I… will miss cars. Yes.” Dean can hear the slight smile on Cas’ face. “This is the nearest thing to flying I’ve felt since I lost my wings. Thank you Dean.” 

Dean swallows a different sort of lump in his throat than he did outside the bar. _Hoo boy._  

“You wanna? Drive I mean. The Impala. You _can drive_ now right? If you promise not to hurt her, and you take it easy on the—” Dean stops rambling because a) he’s rambling and b) Cas is staring at him as if Dean’s just offered Cas his soul. He asks, more tentatively, “Well?” 

Dean should be looking at the road. The road is straight, and empty. Cas’ face is wide open and the barely-there nod splits Dean’s face ear to ear in a grin. He can share this with Cas. It doesn’t need to be strange. Last night on earth, after all. 

There’s soybeans on one side of them and waist-high corn on the other, all sparkling with fireflies, as Dean pulls the Impala into the wide grassy margin past the highway shoulder. The engine cools off to the soft scuff of a light breeze through crop fields and the high pitched harmony of locusts and cicadas. When Cas’ door opens, a nearby cricket goes silent. Dean scrubs the road out of his eyes and for a moment, hears nothing but the blood rushing circuits in his own veins. He scratches his right arm. 

Dean barely makes it out of his seat when he’s being pushed back down, with a face full of Cas, and a hand on his shoulder, and finally—finally, everything is quiet. 

Cas is solid. Dean’s not sure why that’s so surprising, it’s not the first time they’ve touched. They’ve traded blows, and they’ve hugged, and they’ve carried each other, but it still seems wrong that they don’t just phase right through each other. 

Dean pulls his head back, and Cas, honest to, well, not God but whatever, Cas _whines_. 

“Dude, some of us gotta breathe.” 

Cas takes a step back, forcibly takes in a breath of air, and says Dean’s name like it’s a full sentence. 

“Also, you’re not supposed to make out in the _front_ seat, dumbass.” Dean gets up, unsticks his sweat-soaked t-shirt from his back, and drags Cas back to the car. Being pressed between Cas and the car is safe. Dean maneuvers his feet apart enough to pull Cas up flush between them, as close as they can get to each other while fully clothed on the side of the road. 

The brights of a semi illuminate everything for a minute, and the blaring blast of the asshole driver’s horn at their display almost makes Dean want to chase the guy down. His hands are too busy entangling themselves in Cas to flip him off. Cas’ hair looks good completely mussed and the skin under Dean’s fingertips is a link to reality. He barely even considers forcing his fingers through it to squeeze at kidneys and break bones. 

After more than two years, the Mark of Cain pumps liquid horror through Dean’s veins by the second. The vile mixture of alcohol, adrenaline, sheer stupidity, and hope has gotten him this far. Cas’ pull on him overpowers the Mark’s push and Dean can almost relax for a moment. 

Tomorrow is too soon, and too much, and too late. When Dean turns his sweaty face into the side of Cas’ neck and holds on for dear life, Cas tightens his own grip on Dean. It’s not comfortable, but it’s all either can do. 

Dean mumbles a string of meaningless phrases into Cas’ neck: t _his is stupid, I’m not good enough, why tomorrow, why tonight, why do we always have to save the world, why the fuck is there a mosquito in my ear_ … Cas huffs out a laugh about the mosquito, because apparently he understands fluent neckmumble. Cas holds Dean tighter for too short a time, before letting him go. 

“We shouldn’t stay here,” Cas says, without a hint of shame or frustration. 

“Right. We’ve got an apocalypse to end. Or start. Who knows.” Dean doesn’t even try to keep sarcasm from his voice, and he leaves a finger tucked into Cas’ belt. 

With it he draws Cas back to himself, and besieges Cas’ lips with every bit of affection he can physically muster. Cas gives like for like. 

Dean has goosebumps when Cas disentangles himself, headed back for the other side of the car. 

“Hang on—you still wanna drive?” Dean tosses the Impala’s keys at Cas. “Take us out of the world, Cas.” 


	5. Castiel

**Sam - October 28, 2023. 9:00 AM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

“What were you thinking?” Sam hisses at Dean. 

Sam would probably be yelling except that Alex and Jody are trying to help people in the next room over and really, what’s the point. Dean knows better than to let strangers mess with his head—especially when he hasn’t got any backup. And it’s possible Sam wouldn’t care quite as much if he hadn’t believed this was a very real possibility, and hoped like Hell that Dean had more sense than that. 

“You’re the one who seemed bummed out that Cas didn’t wanna try the memory trick with you. I thought it was worth trying,” Dean shrugs, as if being alive still justifies his shitty choices. 

"Of course I thought it was worth trying but I figured you'd be smart enough to wait ‘til we talked to the guy a little more, or, even, sometime you weren't alone—what would you do, he could've broken you and no one was even around to help." Sam digs his fingers into his scalp. Dean could’ve waited a few hours, at least. 

“Help with what?” Dean doesn’t bother keeping his voice low. “There were other people around if I needed help,” _neither of whom had known what Dean was doing, much less been awake,_ “and anyway, why _shouldn’t_ we let Cas shove the things we need to know to help him into our heads? It’s easier than trying to understand what he’s talking about.” 

Sam swallows down the intense feeling that he should’ve been there to help Dean, and that he’d’ve been any more than anyone else. It’s irrational. It’s not something that ever goes away. “But what if it didn’t work? And how do you even know it’s real?”

“It is.” Dean believes it, and therefore it’s true. “Just—look, it’s a lot. But it fits. It _feels_ right.” 

It’s just that simple. Dean’s too fucking lucky for his own good. With a heavy sigh, Sam figures it just really doesn't matter because it worked and Dean's not any worse for the wear. 

"Alright, how's this work. Magic wand? Do I have to kiss a toad?" 

"Touched by an angel, more like." Dean winks suggestively and Sam almost forgets to be worried in his attempt to bite his tongue. He can't quite keep the quirk out of his eyebrow. 

Sam suddenly realizes that selfsame angel is studiously trying to appear not to be listening and not doing a very good job. Consequent questions of teleportation mechanics flash through Sam's mind; with special consideration for tactical deployment. Some of the hunters they work with now, like Kate, aren't all human, and they tend to be some of the best. 

It's an offer to think about later. Sam realizes he stopped paying attention to Dean’s chatter, although Dean’s tone has switched from chiding to serious.

“—and honestly I think I got a little too much. So this isn’t some attempt to protect you from something you can handle yourself, and I’m not trying to hide anything.” Dean takes a deep breath, like this is hard to say, “I gotta agree with the guy though. I have memories of you, broken, because of what Cas did to your head and he was _honest_ about that,” Sam nods, because that is what Cas said to him too, “and I will tell you about it in as much detail as you want, and you can ask me anything, but I’d rather err on the side of caution and just skip that bit entirely.” 

“You mean, _he’s,_ ” Sam nods towards Cas, “willing to share memories with me now too?” 

“He seemed okay with it if I was. I’m good with it if you are.” 

Sam closes his eyes, inhales, and exhales. If he listens carefully, he can hear Jody raising her voice at someone, “ _...don’t care whose ass I have to kick but it better get-_ ” and Sam wonders if that’s (part of) why he feels so tense—he’s going about this all wrong, as if it’s _just him and Dean_ again. Sam shakes his head, and walks out, ignoring Dean’s constipated glower. Dean can wait a few minutes. 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 28, 2023. 9:30 AM. Office, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Jody is sticking her phone into her pocket with a smug look on her face. Sam’s willing to bet whoever she was just talking to isn’t quite as happy. Some of the tension bleeds out of Sam at the thought, and he lets his neck stretch to one side, then the other. 

“What’s wrong now.” Jody’s asking, but it’s not so much a question as a statement: something is wrong, and Sam’s going to tell her. Everything is okay. Everything is okay because they can do things together. Dean’d been there for barely 24 hours and it was only too easy to slip back into old habits of what always seemed like “ _working together_ ” but in retrospect tends to look more like “ _working alone with another person_.” 

“You got a minute? I need you...” Sam was going to say something else, but he’s not sure what. _I need you_. That’s enough. 

When Jody waggles her eyebrows suggestively, most of the remaining tension leaves. Her face breaks out into a huge grin, and then draws back into a pout of mock-consideration. Finally, and most dramatically, Jody squints accusingly at Sam. 

“You want me to hold your hand while you get your brain fried, is that it?” 

Sam can feel the smile on his face, but he nods solemnly. “Yeah, Jode. I want you to make sure my asshole brother and his magical new friend are on the level. I can’t even tell anymore—and I expect that from Dean. This other guy, Cas…” 

“You could always say no. You don’t need those memories right? And if they’re useful, Dean can figure it out.” Sam feels his face scrunch up even as Jody’s tone goes from protective to teasing, and has her hands wrapped around his when she follows it up with, “But it’s okay to say yes, too. Are we getting your brain zapped right now?” 

Sam nods, but before going anywhere he dips his head down, trying to find the warm spot right under Jody’s ear with his nose. He knows he’s just procrastinating now, but it’s reassuring to feel Jody’s warmth and solidity. 

She gives him a minute before she’s tugging on his hair, saying, “So if you get these missing memories back d’you think you might remember wanting to cut your hair?” 

Sam rolls his eyes and squeezes Jody’s hand in his, and walks back to the library with her beside him. 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 28, 2023. 10:00 AM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Dean and Cas have a list written out in front of them, partitioned between “Things Sam Needs to Know” and “Things it’s Safe for Sam to Know” and “Things That it’s Best Not to Put Back into Sam’s Head.” They let him check it over before agreeing that Cas will leave out the third list.

When Dean says “Cas, he doesn’t need your memories of us from when you weren’t visible to us. Really, it’s just sorta creepy,” with a bit of a pinkish hue to his cheeks, Cas crosses out a few things from the second list too. Jody looks through the lists too, and shrugs her approval. Even if it’s mere formality, Sam is glad she got a say in the matter too. 

The process of obtaining memories is painless. Cas puts his hand to Sam’s forehead, almost like a parent trying to feel his child’s temperature. Sam never lets go of Jody’s hand. He’s thankful for that after, because his brain feels _too full._ It’s like overeating but in his head and no way to relieve it. 

The first thing that registers as external to himself is Jody’s voice, and it starts resolving into words bit by bit: “...you sure....could have sai….even able to fix anyth…encouraging Sam to do this for you with less than a full deck of cards.” Jody’s doing her mom voice. That’s never good. 

In the silence before Dean lets out a breath, Sam can almost hear the frown on Jody’s face. 

Dean’s words are a little rough, and a little quick, and don’t sound like they’re coming from the right direction; “I told you, I didn’t think it would happen again. I thought it was a coincidence. Maybe he’s just tired. And I’m sure Sam is fine. It’s just—it’s a lot. He’s smart though,” and here Dean sounds _proud_ , “he’ll sort through it all in no time. Took _me_ a while.” 

Dean is on the floor. With _Castiel_. With _Cas_. Cas. It all fits, like Dean said. It’s all still too much though. Sam lets his eyes close again and squeezes at the warmth of Jody’s hand in his. 

“Alright.” Sam says, and even though he’s letting words out, the pressure in his head is still too much, “I remember now why I don’t do things anymore just because Dean says they’re safe.” He brings his free hand up to pinch the brow of his nose. That doesn’t release the pressure either. 

Jody’s face is floating in Sam’s vision when he opens his eyes again. He wants to smile, to reassure her that everything is fine. That’s probably what he’d do if it were just him and Dean. _Nut up, Winchester_. 

“My brain is going to explode. Do we have any ibuprofen in here?” 

“I’ll go get you some.” Jody’s the actual angel, sent by a God who _actually exists holy shit._  

Once she’s not hovering over him, Sam focuses on Cas and Dean. Cas, who’s lying out cold on the floor. No, with his head on Dean’s balled-up flannel shirt. He’s tempted to make a face, for old time’s sake, but everything clicks into place in his head, instead. There’s no more weird déjà vu feeling from looking at Cas, and the _feelings_ that are obviously connected to this guy, this weird nerdy angel _brother_. _How could he forget Cas_. No, that’s easy. _Because they fixed everything_. Or, fixed the things they could, and broke some more things in the process. Standard Winchester operating procedure. 

Sam knows he’s not going to stay mad at Dean and extends an olive branch. “Is it odd how much sense it all makes, despite seeming entirely ludicrous at the same time?” 

“Your head’ll stop feeling like it’s trying to crawl out your ears in a bit. I had the craziest dreams last night—” 

“I reallllly don’t want to know.” Sam cuts him off before this line of conversation can go any further. Dean’s probably just trying to distract him from the _weirdness_ anyway.

Dean shrugs. “Your loss.” Dean hesitates before adding, “There’s nothing, uh, no bad stuff about Hell or Lucifer in there right? You’ll say something if you start hallucinating?” The words are too fast and Dean does a bad job of hiding his worry. 

Sam frowns and runs his thumb over an old scar on his hand. “Nope. Nothing in here any worse than any nightmares I had as a kid.” 

When Jody comes back with a handful of knock-off Advil and a glass of water, Cas is still out cold. Whatever mojo powers he needs to use to jam memories into brains isn’t doing the guy any good. 

“He’s not staying on the floor in here, someone’s gonna trip.” Jody is using her mom voice again. “Y’all,” and she gestures at all of them, “can figure this all out right? I gotta go make sure Rudy followed up on that wendigo situation and I missed a call from Garth too.” Sam nods, and squeezes Jody’s hand before she can sneak away. He gets a peck on the temple and a swat on the shoulder for his efforts. “Can you make sure the trash gets taken out?” Sam nods again. 

Doesn’t matter if they’re dealing with angels or ghosts or household chores. There’s work to do and they need to get to doing it. 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 28, 2023. 10:30 AM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas doesn’t wake when Sam and Dean maneuver him into Dean’s bed. Sam reverts to hand signals to denote he’s got other things to do, and Dean nods as he leaves. 

After arranging to meet Aaron Bass with a set of curse boxes they’re hoping will negate nazi paraphernalia, Sam spends most of his morning listening to Charlie explain dimensional shifting technospells as a way to bypass processing time to generate password keys. Whatever that means, they have a new algorithm for image search and comparison that she’s pretty sure is better than the federal government’s. If it all works out like it’s supposed to, the system might be seriously useful. Sam beams at his phone, trying to will pride through the air waves. He updates Charlie on recent events before she makes some empty promises to come visit. _Maybe she’ll come if we hold Dean hostage._ Sam hangs up to go find food and his brother, although maybe not in that order.

Sam comes ‘round the curving hallway to find the door to Dean’s room ajar with a squinty-eyed angel’s face poking out. Sam slows his pace as Cas’ eyes meet his own. The deep creases radiating from Cas’ eyes smooth over and his eyebrows pull very slightly together. 

Sam lets his own eyebrows lift, but only clears his throat gently before saying, “C’mon, with any luck Dean will already be in the kitchen, making lunch.” 

Cas’ intense scrutiny immobilizes Sam, and instead of continuing on towards the kitchen, he finds himself still rooted in the hallway.

Cas asks, “Are you alright, Sam?”

“Better than you.” Sam brushes off the question. Then he thinks better of it, and elaborates: “Actually, yeah. I’m good. Thanks, by the way, for the memory enema. It’s weird to have to re-examine memories trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not.” 

Frown lines solidify on Cas’ face but he doesn’t respond. Sam shakes his head a little, and claps Cas on the shoulder. 

Cas declines to eat, but sits with Sam and Dean while they devour ham sandwiches. They still have no explanation for the angel debacle, but Dean tells Cas that he “really does prefer this, like you said I would.” Sam has to agree. The weird sense of double vision when he looks at Cas is mostly gone, and the past no longer feels too large to fit inside his skull.

Sam tries to hide his second sandwich from Jody when she walks up behind him. She’s too fast, and too cunning. Cold noses applied to necks are a distraction and should be outlawed. 

When Jody asks, “So what’s the plan now? Do I need to give Sam a week off to go up north with you?” Sam is excited about the prospect for a few minutes. 

“I’ve been meaning to take time off for forever and come up there. See if there’s anything I could do to help at the salvage yard, and to help straighten out stuff. You know, we could even seriously look into selling one of the houses—don’t need both of them. Money might come in handy.” There always seems to be an excuse: work, a case, or something Jody and Sam wanted or needed to do at home. After a while, it was easier not to want to visit Dean than to feel guilty about staying away so long. Sam’d still always _meant_ to visit, but he hasn’t been up there since Jody moved down to Lebanon permanently. 

From the look on Dean’s face, this time won’t work out, either. 

“If Cas is up for it, angel-express’ll get me home quicker. Don’t need two cars.” 

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Jody’s using her mom voice again. Sam thinks that _probably_ shouldn’t be so hot. “Cas, no offense, but you fainted just from a memory party trick.” 

“It shouldn’t be a problem. I haven’t noticed any problem teleporting before.” Cas’s nose is scrunched up, so he’s probably not completely sure of himself. “But teleportation is...you might call it flying. Just a few basic probability distribution calculations over the possible spatial transformations, making a few observations, and then expand—” Cas cuts himself off. He must notice that everyone’s eyes have glazed over. “It’s not something I need to draw on any power to do, like healing or the memory transfer. It’s much safer than traveling by car.” 

Jody straightens up before she responds, “Well, if you stay here you could get more research done. And we can make some more calls, watch over you for a few days before you decide to go anywhere.” She sounds worried, and unconvinced. 

Cas looks from Jody, as her argument trails off, towards Dean. Dean rubs a hand through his hair, grabs the plates off the table, and retreats from the table. Cas’ eyes follow him around the small kitchen, waiting. With a refilled glass of water, he faces the awkward assembly with his verdict.

“You got work to do here, little brother. I’ll go with Cas. It’s not like we could sell a house before you’d have to be back here anyway.” 

“So that’s it, you’re just leaving?” The words are out of Sam’s mouth before he realized he was going to say them. They’re colder than they would’ve been if he’d been aware. Dean sighs, but doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes.

“I want to work on this case. For Cas. As long as I don’t have to kill anything, or try to outrun anything, or read too many books, or sleep on awful motel mattresses, I mean.” He shoots half a smile at Cas. “It just seems decent to finish up what we started. But I didn’t exactly come prepared or anything. I’m gonna have to get everything shut up and winterized, and if you think I’ll just stay down here and leave _my car_ all by _herself_ up in the frozen north all winter, _you are mistaken._ ” Dean punctuates the last sentence with the slam of his empty glass onto the countertop. 

Jody glares at him. 

“Baby could use a nice warm winter. If, uh, you guys don’t mind? I...gotta admit. I kinda miss this place.” 

Sam smiles, and Jody just rolls her eyes at all of them. The dulcet tones of Alex screeching “Boooooossssss” from the front door jumpstarts everyone back into action. Sam and Jody have their regular work to get done, and Dean checks to make sure he isn’t missing anything before they’re on their way. 

 

* * *

**Sam - October 28, 2023. 5:30 PM. Map Table Room, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Dean’s duffel bag hits the map table room floor with a muffled clunk. Sam and Jody look up from the three cell phones and a laptop they’re comparing in front of them, cross-referencing names and numbers. 

“How many days do you think it’ll take you to get back down here?” Jody asks, worried. 

“A week? Maybe? I’m not sure, Jody.” Dean rubs the back of his neck. 

“All right, then what’s the next step on Cas’ case?” Jody asks more forcefully. _Maybe trying to make sure Dean takes this all seriously_ , thinks Sam. 

“Groundwork. We can look into lore, but maybe we should look into the spell too?” Dean smiles cheekily. “You already know that. Did you have anything else in mind?” 

“Nah, I just wanted to make sure you’ll get your butt back down here. We’re not sitting’ around twiddling our thumbs all day, and I’m not giving up my down time _or Sam’s_ to pull miracle cures for angels out of my ass. This is your case, and we’ll help with what we can, but I’m not doing your work for you. That goes for both of you,” Jody finishes, nodding at Cas too. 

“Call if you think of anything though,” Sam adds. 

“Sure you won’t stay at least a few more days before you leave?” Jody pulls Dean into a hug before she lets them go.

“We’re good, but thanks. I probably left a light on or something, I should go. We’ll be back soon enough.” 

Sam hands Cas an untraceable burner phone. "We put you on our _family plan_. Which basically just means all of our numbers are in your phone already, and we paid for it. So you should use it. Anytime you need one of us to answer, just call."

Cas takes the phone with a smile and nods gratefully. 

Dean starts to look uncomfortable at the drawn out goodbyes, and turns to Cas. “So, we doing this thing?”

Sam waves a little as Cas extends two fingers towards Dean. Cas hesitates, making a fist, before grasping Dean’s left shoulder and disappearing in a whoosh. 

Sam’s pocket is buzzing almost immediately: “ _home safe,”_ says the text message, and a picture loads with a smirking Dean and a somewhat confused Cas in front of Jody’s old house. The bunker seems almost empty for a brief moment until Sam hears a knock at the door that’s _either_ dinner getting delivered or another hunter stopping by. It’s hard to tell anymore. 

 


	6. Axis Mundi

**Cas - November 2, 2023. 1:30 PM. The Sequel Bookshop, Kearney, NE.**

Cas pages through a taped up blue paperback at a second-hand bookstore in Kearney Nebraska, with the word “ANGELS” writ large across the cover. There’s nothing useful (or even accurate) contained within its pages, and he puts it back onto the shelf. 

Dean should be on the road by now, if he kept to the schedule he outlined for Cas. He had things to do. House things. Dean things. Human things. Cas would only have gotten in the way. 

Searching through books at the Lebanon headquarters might not have been terribly fruitful, but it’s hardly the only repository of lore in the world. Cas had been inspired to try other places, too. The plan had been to start at the Library of Congress, and work his way back across the U.S. first. Each roomful of books takes a few seconds to scan and analyze, if Cas can hold his attention on books while letting himself physically unfocus. Without reaching for Heaven’s power, which carries the threat of unconsciousness, the partially-focused-partially-unfocused state is difficult to maintain. 

Cas can almost imagine the rumble of the Impala as Dean drives southward along open highways, neglecting the radio’s intermittent static bursts. 

It takes an act of willpower to drag himself back to physical existence. Cas knows he should’ve stayed on the east coast. He picks up the next tattered paperback espousing ways to communicate with your personal guardian angel, and tries to ignore the tug in his chest. 

“Excuse me, sir?” says the bookshop clerk timidly, from behind Cas. When he turns toward the voice, the clerk continues, “I’m about to close up. Did you find what you were looking for? Is there anything I can help you with?” 

 _It shouldn’t be that late._ “No, thank you.” 

The clerk locks the store up behind Cas when he exits. From the street, Cas teleports himself farther west, where bookshops are still open. 

 

* * *

**Cas - November 6, 2023. 6:15 PM. Earth.**

Cas races the solar terminator around the world for almost a week before letting himself go back to Lebanon. Humanity seems to have no answer secreted away in any of the volumes Cas searched through; book stacks in libraries, bookstores, and museums, universities and private homes all futile. 

Cas gets the distinct feeling that Dean is nowhere in the building. Instead, he finds Jody in a room that’s been converted into office space. The ancient supercomputer it houses is surrounded by contemporary equipment and more comfortable furniture than the original Men of Letters installed. 

Jody seems surprised at the sudden intrusion. She regains her composure quickly enough to finish off an email before turning to face Cas, hand-on-hip.

“Well?” Jody asks. 

Cas gives the “cliffsnotes” version, as Dean would call it, of his travel, and reports back no success.

“Sounds like you need a distraction,” Jody says, “Did you come across anything we should be aware of? You should bring back any books that might be useful in the future. Multiple pairs of eyes with years of experience looking for useful lore might find something you miss alone. I think sometimes we focus so hard on finding the exact solution that we miss things that could’ve been useful first steps.” 

It’s good advice, and Cas agrees to bring any dangerous lore books he finds back as well as anything he thinks might have relevant angel lore. 

 

* * *

**Cas - November 9, 2023. 9:45 AM. 905 S Summit Avenue, Sioux Falls, SD.**

Cas stands outside of the same house in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for the second time in less than a month. He spends a full minute wondering if it would be appropriate to ring the doorbell again, or if it would be okay to teleport inside now that Dean knows what he’s capable of. 

_You’re just afraid he won’t answer the door a second time,_ he tells himself, before jamming a finger onto the button. 

When Dean answers the door, his lip curls a bit, and he says, “What are you doing here?” 

“You weren’t in Kansas, so I came here.” Cas responds. 

Dean doesn’t invite him in. “Why are you even here if you don’t want my help? Didn’t you have libraries all over the world to scour _without me_?”

“I do, Dean. But I came for your advice,” Cas says, “Jody said I needed a distraction, and I’ve been working on translating texts.” 

Cas can see Dean’s shoulders heave heave with deprecating, silent laughter. He walks back into the house. Dean doesn’t tell Cas _not_ to follow. Cas closes the door as he steps inside. 

“I found an Arabic text describing modern electronic devices useful for detection and in defense of the supernatural, but I’m not familiar with some of the electronics notations. Sam thought you might know, or might be able to put some of them together?” Cas asks hopefully, following Dean into the kitchen. 

Dean opens the fridge and stares listlessly into it. 

“I can’t help you, Cas. Look at me,” Dean slams the refrigerator door and waves at the dirty dishes and empty microwaveable food containers that belong in the trash, “I can’t take care of myself, much less the house. I don’t know why Sam and Jody put you up to coming here with a _job_ for me, or why you thought I could help one angel, much less a sky full of them. Sam will help you, even if Jody says they’re too busy. _They_ won’t leave you hanging.” 

Dean pauses to scrub his face with his hand. 

“Tell Sam I can’t. He’ll understand.” 

Cas pushes air out of his lungs indignantly, and doesn’t tell Dean _I know you can, I believe in you, you are the best hunter I’ve ever seen._ His heart breaks a little but he knows his words won’t mean anything. 

“I think you should call your brother. Tell him yourself.” 

Cas doesn’t wait for a response from Dean. He sets the notebook full of translations down on a chair and teleports away. 

* * *

**November 10, 2023. 5:47 PM. 500 Locust Street, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam juggles a tray of cookies while walking a crying couple through the process of salting and burning their cat, and almost misses Dean’s call. 

“Yes, once this is done your cat’s ghost will stop howling in the middle of the night…yeah, yowling.” _Unless it’s just a stray._ “No, no, hang on Mrs. Garcia, I have another call on the line. Let me make sure it’s not an emergency. You just, make sure that fire doesn’t burn out of control. Yeah.—” Sam closes the oven door, finds the right button and gets through, “Hi, this is Sam Winchester, please tell me you’ve got an emergency,” before his brother’s bark of laughter interrupts. 

“That bad, huh?” 

“Can pets even _become_ ghosts? How many years have we been doing this?” Sam says it with a smile on his face. Too long to still be alive. 

“Too damn long. You got a minute to talk?” 

 _No._ “Yeah, gimme a sec—” and switching back to the Garcia-Königsburgs, “How’s that barbecue coming along?” The shocked silence on the other end of the phone is worth it. “Something came up, but give us a call if you’re still having troubles, we’ll send someone over to suss out the problem.” 

“What do—” they sound worried and offended, and Sam is tired of it. 

“Sorry, I can’t talk. I’m sure you’ve got it all under control. Have a nice evening.” And Sam hangs up on them. Which is less satisfying with cell phones than the old landline ones in the bunker. 

He grabs a cookie before frowning, looking at his phone, and scrambling to call his brother back. 

Some shuffling noises preempt Dean’s jeer, “Tired of me already?” 

 _You’re the one that didn’t come back when you said you would._ Sam grabs for the easier conversation. “What are you doing, wrestling filing cabinets?” 

“Goin’ through the attic, actually.” As if to prove his point, Dean sneezes. “Cas went through the local library when he was here the first time, and the one the next town over. Maybe a few of ‘em, I dunno. I figured tomorrow I’ll go through whatever’s left from Bobby’s.” They both quiet for a moment, and Sam purses his lips. They saved what they could, but it had always been too hard to go through Bobby’s stuff in the past, and so they’d left it all. 

“And I know I said I’d be down there. Don’t think I don’t know why you sent Cas up here. But I been thinking, I got a lotta stuff that needs to be taken care of if I’m gonna leave this place. There’s the pipes to drain, and I oughta put up storm windows, and I still have a rented dumpster over at the salvage yard, and that’s not even touching on the stuff I been meaning to get to. Like repainting the trim here at Jody’s. And...maybe I oughta just stay up here. Don’t matter to Cas where I am right? He can just pop out wherever he needs to go.” 

Sam raises his eyebrows and wills disfavor through the line. 

It seems to work. 

“I’m just in the way down there. Not any use on hunts anymore, hands shake too bad to shoot straight with anything other than a shotgun. You shoulda given my room away, there’s plenty other’s could use it.” 

Ahh. That’s it. 

“So you’re done with Cas’ case?” 

“Like there’s anything I could figure out that he doesn’t already know.” Dean’s words are dripping with self-deprecating nonsense. “It was fun and all, but I don’t belong in that...that. Not anymore.” 

“Yeah? I call bullshit. There’s more to hunting than being the guy who knows every single answer, and can kill anything that doesn’t fit his answers.” 

“Sam—” 

“If you’re gonna be okay with being team-phones-and-research, you can help. You actually do know a lot, y’know? You’re a walking, talking encyclopedia of lore. Even if all you did was sit on the sofa and answer questions every once in awhile it’d still be worth having you around.” Sam can hear the echo of sharp air he huffs out rebounded back to him a bit cracklier over the phone, “Dean you don’t need to be useful or have any worth to be around either. Me and Jody, we loved having you. You don’t need to sequester yourself away.” _Not anymore_. “At least come back, and let’s see what we get on the angel thing.”

Dean makes a noncommittal noise. 

“Oh, and if you find anything good up there, bring ‘em down.” 

“Yeah,” Dean says, a little mollified, and then again, a little more relieved, “Yeah. Okay.” Sam hangs up and smiles. There’s a plan, and Dean can still follow directions pretty well. 

Sam nabs another cookie from the cooling rack. 

 

* * *

**Cas - November 13, 2023. 12:04 PM. Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas hears Dean’s voice before he sees anyone and the bunker immediately feels more welcoming than the last three times he was here. Jody was right. It’s easier this way, bringing books back and checking in. A sense of not working alone makes Cas happier than he’s felt in years. Sam and Dean’s voices echoing down bunker hallways as they argue good-naturedly about the chemical properties of ectoplasm (if not quite in those words) sound nothing like the chorus that Heaven once was, but it’s a far cry from the almost-silence of Cas’ lone vibrational state. 

Since prying open a new doorway a few years ago, Cas has gone back to Heaven only on occasion—to check, to prod, whatever. Twice he’s returned through no volition of his own. Cas knows both times were almost certainly a function of the spell operating on him, calling him back. It’s disheartening. 

Though Dean avoids Cas, he diligently pages through the books Cas had given Jody.

Cas recognizes a set of flashing microprocessor detectors on a shelf in the map table room. Both devices had been detailed in the notes Cas left in Sioux Falls. 

Dean avoids Cas the next time he visits, and the time after. When Dean does see Cas, he frowns and walks away, but the sticky notes in the stack of books Jody hands back to Cas have Dean’s notes all over them. 

Cas steels himself and approaches Dean Winchester’s door again. This one, he knocks on without hesitation. 

“Yeah?” Dean’s voice responds. 

Cas opens the door. Dean’s propped up in his bed with his glasses sliding down his nose and a stack of neon pink post-its stuck to his chest. All of his attention is on the book he’s holding up in front of his face. 

Cas can’t help but smile. 

“Dean,” Cas says, alerting Dean to his presence more fully. 

Dean’s posture immediately stiffens, and he sets the book down on the bed. 

“What.” 

“I…” Cas isn’t sure what he wanted. _This isn’t it._

“I’m going to go blind squinting at all these books, but I said I would do it and damned if I don’t. But don’t we have enough?” 

“If they don’t have any answers in them, then they’re not really enough.” Cas responds, imperiously. 

“When’s the last time you checked in on Heaven? Are you sure what we’re trying to do here is even worthwhile?”

“I can tune in to angel radio any time I want. Nothing has changed.” 

“Right. Because everyone’s always forthcoming about their problems. Recon is like, the first step of any hunt. You wanted my help? There’s my suggestion.” Dean leans back in his bed, not so stiff now. 

Cas moves his head in an approximation of a nod and leaves Dean’s room quickly. 

Jody and Sam are gentler when he tells them what Dean said, but they agree with him. _It might help_. 

Maybe by giving humans the knowledge that angels exist, something in the spell will have changed. Cas expects nothing, but it's responsibility and reminder. He's not _just_ upsetting the Winchesters' lives for the chance to spend a few more minutes with them.

 

* * *

**Cas - November 22, 2023. 7:45 PM. Heaven.**

Entering through Heaven’s storage halls is eery, there's no angelic presence left here. Some human souls move about, outside of their assigned storage spaces. Some are angry, others are just confused, and though Cas knows this is not how Heaven _should_ be, he doesn't care, and he wishes the human souls well. They're choosing to deny their personal paradises? So what. It's very _human_ of them.

The angels themselves have settled into lowest-energy configurations—sitting in halos around some undefined center like unexcited atoms—and are spaced accordingly: what seems haphazard at first glance is dreadfully purposeful and strives to best adhere to the rules of optimization. Even Cas finds himself most comfortable existing in certain spaces, and _moving in step_ with the system. It’s subtle enough that he doesn’t notice it at first, and it doesn’t quite hurt to break stride with it but the overall sense of _wrongness_ from it all is so uncomfortable that he tries not to think about it. 

Cas observes every bit angel-occupied space, and finds not a single strand of hope that anything has changed for the better. Cas snaps out of a light trance he’s fallen into, and ignores the tug that says it _would be so easy to just stay_ as he maps himself back into Earthly matter along grace-powered transforms. 

 


	7. The Real Dean Winchester

**Cas - November 26, 2023. 4:51 PM. Shooting Range, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas collapses himself directly into the basement shooting range. Sam and Dean are practicing, or, on closer inspection, perhaps having a friendly competition. Cas leans against the solid foundation wall and concentrates on the not-perfect rhythm of their shooting. The offbeat sound of humanity is refreshing after being immersed in Heaven’s precision. 

When they both stop and slide their earmuffs to hang around their necks, Sam checks the time and says, “Whoops, gotta go hit the shower. Claire and Alex will kill me if I’m late for ‘daddy-daughter’ night, or whatever it is they’ve cooked up.” 

Sam runs through a set of checks on his gun before he sets it down on the ledge next to Dean while Dean more slowly safety-checks his own. Neither Winchester notices Cas until Sam turns around. 

“Hey Cas. You, uh, been here long? We didn’t hear you come in,” Sam says, as he sets his earmuffs aside. 

“You were busy,” Cas responds with a weak smile. If the face Sam makes is anything to go by, it wasn’t terribly convincing. The cold concrete in the echoing underground hall feels solid all around them, and Cas tried to soak in the tranquility of the wall supporting him. He’s calmer than when he showed up, but he guesses not quite enough to fool Winchesters. 

Dean looks up at Cas’ words, and Sam looks to Dean like he expects Dean to say something. Silence echoes a little too hard off the sturdy walls and Sam shakes his head a bit, turning back to walk towards the door, and Cas, instead. “I’ve gotta get going, I’ve got this thing with the girls tonight. You wanna come with?” 

Cas, though, doesn’t turn away from Dean. Dean has his earmuffs in hand, idly wiggling a muff back and forth on its hinge, eyes never leaving Cas’. Cas doesn’t turn away when he tells Sam, “No, thanks.” _Not now. Not yet. One crisis at a time._

Even if Sam’s offer had sounded appealing, Claire Novak presents a curious set of complications that Cas isn’t ready to face yet. Not right now, and certainly not in the state he’s in. 

Sam squeezes Cas’ shoulder reassuringly as he goes. “Well if you change your mind, or if you need anything, just let me know.” 

“Thank you, Sam,” says Cas seriously. He appreciates the help Sam is openly offering, even if neither of them are sure what exactly will help. Sam will want to hear Cas’ report about Heaven, but that can wait for later. 

 

* * *

**Cas - November 26, 2023. 5:02 PM. Shooting Range, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Dean pushes himself off the divider wall once Sam’s gone, and walks over. He squints at Cas, then raises his gun-laden hands a bit, looks down at them, and then lowers them. He opens his mouth, only to shut it. And then heads into the open office and sits down to clean each of the guns in succession. Cas places himself just inside the door and watches. 

Eventually Dean spills words into the silence. They leave him in a quiet, matter-of-fact, if slow way, and Dean’s eyes focus on the holes in a target through the window. 

“Right about now, I think, would be a good time for a beer—don’t offer to get me one though, please. It’s just,” Dean is quiet only for a beat, “just, it’s funny how things change, y’know?” It’s a rhetorical question, and Dean doesn’t wait for an answer. “Even when things seem genuinely _good_ , there are still things that are no fun. You spend so much time in this line of work saving _other people_. You don’t really stop and think about doing good things for yourself too much.” 

He rubs his chin. “I never used to have any trouble doing stuff just because it felt good, but, when I do something _now_ to take care of myself? Or something _healthy_? It feels selfish. There are people out there dying because monsters exist. It doesn’t even matter that I know most of those monsters ain’t gonna do shit unless they’re provoked or disturbed. It feels _wrong_ to want something good just for _me_. How fucked up is that?” Dean tips his chair back as far as it will go. He lets his eyes close. Cas realizes he’s staring at Dean, although he’s not sure when that happened. He doesn’t stop. 

Dean continues, “Part of it, of course, is the chemical addiction right? But it’s the behavior too. I want the beer in my hand because it’s _something to hold onto_. When you can’t say anything, or it’s too hard to. Drinking is just, well. It’s easier. Feels like it’ll be better to forget you wanted to say anything at all. Maybe even best to just forget everything entirely.—Not that that’s what I was thinking at the time. Had to figure all that stuff while I spent hours sorting through broken glass and leftover charcoal chunks of Bobby’s house, mostly. Broke down once when I found a piece of a Jim Beam bottle. Funny how that works out.” There’s a knot in Cas’ throat, and he feels like he should respond; laugh or cry, something he’s not sure. It’d be the proper _human_ response. If he knew what to do. It doesn’t matter, because Dean is continuing to fill up the silence as if it’s become too uncomfortable now.

“I read a lot of the literature. Twelve-step program, and all that. Even sat through one meeting. Little too much ‘believe in a higher power’ and—no offense—but I haven’t met a higher power yet that I wanted to believe in, much less trust with my life. Hell, I’ve killed ‘higher powers.’ Makes us kinda the highest powers around, right?” Dean’s still got his eyes closed but there’s a smirk on his lips that says he finds this part amusing instead of disappointing. He taps his head. “It’s kinda reassuring, in an odd way, that even though God really does seem to exist, he might as well not. Makes being wrong about it less hard to cope with.”

“Why?” Cas manages, and then clarifies, “Why did you stop? Why did you start?”

“When didn’t I start? It’s hard to remember a time I wasn’t drinking. Sometimes it was better, sometimes worse. The Mark though.” Dean leans forward and looks out the window again. “The Mark was it’s own sort of addiction. When it was gone, finally, when all the demons were gone, and most of what we’d been fighting against, I dunno. I took a dive into the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Seemed to work for Bobby, and Dad, and Ellen. Why not, right?

“And Sam, he had _things_ to do. He spent as much time up north visiting Jody and the girls as he did down here. I think he just wanted to get away from me. Did you know that Charlie set up these giant ‘scholarship’ funds for both of them? Alex and Claire, I mean. More than either of them could ever need for school, and she told them it didn’t matter to her if they got educated ‘on Wikipedia or at Harvard.’ So Claire went to some university back in Illinois where she grew up. Works for child protective services now or something. She keeps an eye out for kids whose situations might need more of _our_ sort of help than what they normally offer. She’s doing really well!” Dean smiles as he brags about Charlie and Claire. “Alex is here still, and she’s gotten damn good at hunting. What Charlie did was awesome, gave those girls so many options.

“I fucked up though. Said some things to Alex that I really shouldn’t have, like the flammable toe rag I was emulating. She still hates me for that.

“Thing about it is, at the time, I thought it was her fault. Thought it was anyone else’s fault. Hell, I didn’t see me as an old drunk, I saw me as a 20-something year old guy, a peer of hers, making a raunchy joke. Which is the real problem. I was the problem. _Am the problem_. I’m still figuring out who I am.” Dean looks at Cas, “For a long time I ‘helped,’” Dean uses air quotes, “people because I thought I was better than them, because I thought it was what you should do when you know more, know better.” Dean licks his lips, rubs his face. “Now, I think,” Dean pauses again, “I almost feel guilty when I reach out. Like I have to offer something, because I’m really looking for help from everyone else. I want to help people, but I guess I’m looking more for help myself. Like if I can keep a few more people alive, somehow, it’d make my existence worthwhile. Or at least, make me less of a colossal fuckup.”

Dean adds more quietly, “Not that I can save anyone anymore.” 

Dean groans a bit as he pushes himself out of his chair. Cas watches Dean’s hands as they pat off imaginary dirt from his butt, before Dean turns around and grips Cas’s shoulder. “C’mon, it’s chilly down here, and I’m a shit storyteller. You look a little less shellshocked, at least—ready to face the world again?” 

He shouldn’t be allowed to face the world: he’s broken and he belongs in Heaven. He deserves the bland state of not-quite-nonexistence his entire angelic genus has fallen victim to. He _doesn’t deserve_ to wander the earth on an impossible quest with a goal he’s not sure he wants or deserves. Like Dean said, wanting something _good_ for oneself, it feels _selfish_. But if Dean’s okay with it, then Cas will try to be okay with it too. 


	8. Interlude: May 20, 2015

Everything goes dark. Dean expects the sort of roaring rush that an oncoming demon horde would make, but the darkness that wraps itself around the Impala quenches all external noise. Dean’s eyes slowly adjust from the bright daylight to the dim dashboard lights. It’s only enough to make out his brother’s silhouette. 

Sam’s shoulders follow his ears as they turn to face Dean, but it’s not Sam. Dean recognizes Him immediately, though. 

“What the fuck are you doing here, don’t tell me the lock sprung you free too?” 

“No, but it’s okay. You don’t belong here either. Look, it’s taking me and Mikey a lot of pain and effort to do this, so for once in your life, shut up and listen.” Lucifer tilts Sam’s head and raises an eyebrow in challenge. “I don’t like you. Michael doesn’t like you. And we’d actually be pretty okay with the Darkness coming back and destroying you.” 

Sam’s fingers forcefully grip Dean’s forearm, where the Mark of Cain had been before everything went tits up. 

“BUT, and this is _important_ , I take pride in my responsibilities. You got this thing now?” and he digs his thumb more firmly into the flesh of Dean’s arm, “You belong to me.” Lucifer lets go but doesn’t pull away, adding as an afterthought, “And Michael actually wants a world to rule someday.” 

Dean doesn’t move a muscle, trying to stare down Satan. Sam’s face shrugs at him, levels into a leer, and continues speaking Lucifer’s words: “So you get to learn a lesson. The hard way.”

“How are you even doing this?” Dean grits out. 

“It’s amazing isn’t it? What two Archangels are capable of doing when they work together. We might not be strong enough to pry the bars open wide enough. But we can sure peek out through the cracks. _You’re wasting my time, boy_. There are things you need to know. Now.”

“You mean, other than, ‘don’t open the lock’?” 

“Even better.” Lucifer almost sings. “How to fuse it.”

Dean’s head hurts, but things are starting to fit into place. He replays their conversation in his head as Lucifer waits impatiently for him to catch on. “You’re lying to me. _Proud_ of the mark? What happened to how it’s the root of your evil, the reason you got cast out of Heaven? Why should I believe _anything you say_ anyway?” 

Lucifer sounds like a cat, voice laced with pride and entertainment when he responds, “Ah. Good. You noticed. Michael thought playing to your _sense of duty_ was the best option. He made a call; it was the wrong one. He’s never understood choice, and free will. Not like we have, Dean. He doesn’t understand that sometimes, like playing to your sense of paternal obligations, to God and the Father, we make the _wrong choice_ , and are left to live with the consequences. Isn’t that right? 

“How did it feel, Dean? How did it feel when you chose to murder your own brother? How did it feel when you _had that choice taken away from you, and killed the world instead_? Which was worse?”

Dean has no answer. Part of his brain says _I wasn’t going to do it_. That part of his brain is lying. 

The Devil leans back and steeples his fingers. He lets Dean think for a moment. 

“I won’t lie to you, Dean. This is definitely a prison break. We’ll still be locked up, but not here. Not in this cage. Not with just each other. Can you imagine, your whole world, comprised of just you and your brother? Let me tell you. There’s nothing more hellish.” Lucifer smiles when he says the word ‘hellish’ like it tastes bad in his mouth. 

“Still not seeing why I should do anything you say. Is there a point to all this?” 

“Of course. You see, you’re going to do a set of Trials. Trials that will close the gates of Heaven, forever. And in the process, _every last bit_ of angelic grace—including our two sorry asses down here— gets vacuum sealed up into Heaven.” 

Dean still doesn’t see the point. 

“Did I mention? That ugly scar you’re sporting is anchored with angelic grace—mine in fact. It’s why we were able to put on this lovely show for you.” Lucifer bats Sam’s eyelashes a touch. Dean throws up a little in his mouth. “We’ve got a connection, you and I.” 

“So I do these trials, and you all get stuffed back into your angel molds, and never come out? And the Mark goes too. Can’t you just take it back?” Anger tinges Dean’s voice. 

Lucifer’s response is unfazed and coy, “I could, but I don’t want to.” 

“Last time we tried out one of these trials, _my_ brother almost died.” 

“I know, I was watching.” Lucifer smiles. 

“So I set you free, and lose the Mark, but die in the process?” 

“You didn’t have a problem with dying before, what’s different now?” Sam’s face is contorted into disgust. Dean has to look away. “Besides, you’re sporting a shiny little Mark of Cain, didn’t you know? You’re immortal. The spells won’t kill you, the Mark will absorb the sacrifice. You live, Mark-free. We spend the rest of your mortal life, and several more, breaking out of Heaven. By the time we get to have our apocalypse play-date, you’ll be actual-dead and won’t care anymore. Everybody wins!” 

“What happens to the Mark? What stops _The Darkness_ or whatever from coming through?” 

“Heaven—what are you, an idiot? What do you think Heaven is? And angels? LIGHT VS DARKNESS. Let’s see, what’s the _angel-particle-physics-for-dummies_ version… you, humans, you’re made of matter, right? Angels are more like light, we’re another type of bosons—no, never mind, you don’t actually know what that means. And you met the Leviathans! That’s what happened when _Daddy_ tried to Create from The Darkness. Basically what your human scientists call dark matter. The Darkness is, well, humans call the impact of The Darkness on the universe ‘dark energy.’ They don’t even know! And they still call it dark.” Lucifer shakes his head. “Fitting. Anyway, the details are boring and you don’t care. But, did you ever wonder why God needed an army of soldiers before you puny humans even existed? Angels are weapons. Each one is a beacon against The Darkness. When the Mark comes off you, it’s not being removed, it’s getting transferred. In the process, we jam something bright and shiny so hard into that lock that nothing can ever come through. In other words, we put Heaven in the keyhole.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“Says the high school dropout. Look, you don’t have to believe me. But Michael and I agreed enough to work together to get you to listen. And I’m going to tell you how to complete the Trials to shut the Gates of Heaven—the spells that _don’t_ end with all the angels Earthside. For free. It’s up to you how you decide to use it. Tell your brother—no.” Lucifer almost looks sad for a moment. 

“Do me a favor, don’t just do something because you feel like you’ve got no choice. Choose to do something. Fuck up because you’re making decisions, not because you’re running from them. It’s waaaaay more fun to watch.” 

 


	9. The Man in the Night

**Sam - November 25, 2023. 11:30 PM. Map Table Room, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam comes back from the movies with his girls, and they both react badly to seeing Dean and Cas in the front room, smiling about something over the glowing table. Alex gets stiff, and tries to edge away, but Claire slides out the small silver knife from her belt. 

“Sam, why’s there a fucking shifter here?” Claire asks, deceptively calm. 

Dean speaks up before Sam can even start to explain. “He's not. Look—Cas, hold out your hand.” 

Cas blushes a little when Dean grabs him by the wrist gently, holding his other hand out to Claire, “Give it here, kiddo. Cas, may I?” 

Cas looks confused and says, “What's a knife supposed to do?" 

Dean shakes his head and says, like he would to a victim at the scene of one of their investigations, “Lots of nasties react bad to silver. Claire thinks you're a shapeshifter, and we're going to have to deal with that now," Dean looks apologetically at Cas, "but first, you mind bleeding a little?" 

Cas nods and grabs the blade with his hand. He holds it up to Claire, and then heals himself. 

Claire's not impressed, “So he’s not human, and he looks like my dad, but you don’t think he’s dangerous?”

“He’s plenty dangerous, but he’s not a danger to us. There's more than one reason why two men can look alike, Claire,” Dean says, placing himself between Claire and Cas. 

“Claire, he’s our friend. Look it’s late, and he’ll still be here tomorrow. You mind waiting ’til then to put _our guest_ on trial?” Sam asks. 

“Yeah, I do mind.” 

“I’m asking, let it be until tomorrow,” Sam says. 

“Not worth it, C. C’mon,” says Alex, pulling at Claire’s elbow. Claire glares at Cas all the way up the stairs. 

The door shuts behind them as Dean wipes Cas’ blood off of Claire’s knife. Dean says, a little too loud, “So, Sam, Cas made a pitstop in Heaven on his way back here.” 

They sit down at the table and Sam tries to listen to Cas patiently, but what Cas says doesn’t make much sense. There’s nothing to fight, there’s nothing to kill or destroy—the best advice he can offer Cas for now is to run from it, and stay away. 

Sam shakes his head and digs the heel of his hand into his eye socket. It doesn’t help. 

"So lemme see if I understand even a little bit of what you’re saying,” Sam tells Cas when he’s done trying to describe it, “It’s like, a room with a bunch of clocks and they all tick and chime simultaneously?" 

"Sounds creepy,” interrupts Dean before Cas can answer. 

Cas deflates a little and slumps into the hard wood chair he’s sitting in, but it’s hard to tell if he’s disappointed in Dean’s response or how, even with the Winchesters’ help, there are still no answers. Dean seems to understand something on Cas’ face that Sam can’t see, because he shifts his weight in his own chair, shrugging off whatever went unsaid between them. Sam studiously clears his throat. 

"It _is_ creepy,” Cas agrees _._ “What if I end up like the rest of them, and lose everything? What if I don’t even remember my own name?”

Sam can’t possibly have an answer for that, but a bit of levity maybe? 

“If you lose your name, you can have Dean’s. He’s not doing anything with it.”

“Yeah well, _you’re_ not doing anything with it,” Dean retorts. He shrugs, and then looks Cas over playfully before saying, “In all honestly though, Cas, you’d make an excellent Winchester. You seem to fuck everything up and try to fix things to the tune of more destruction and good intentions. You can totally have my name.”

“Speaking of identity theft, do you have any thoughts how we should explain you to Claire?” Sam asks. 

“I would prefer to be truthful, if that’s possible.” Cas spreads out his hands, palm up, on the table. 

“Oh yeah that always goes over well. ‘Hi, I’m walking around wearing your Dad as a three piece suit. It’s okay though, because he’s dead and he said it was okay when he had no clue what that meant. I swear I’m not a bad guy.’ I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.” 

Sam and Cas both glare at Dean. 

“Then what, are you going to zap her brain like you did ours?” 

 

* * *

**Cas - November 26, 2023. 10:45 AM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas pages through one of Dean’s noted books as Claire’s footsteps cross the library. Dean is in the office, Sam is sitting at the map table with his computer. Both of them have placed themselves where they can hear and react, but far enough to pretend at privacy. 

Claire is Cas’ fault, too. Why _shouldn’t_ she want to kill him? She doesn’t even know the half of it. 

The heavy wooden chair across from Cas scrapes heavily across the floor, before Claire sits herself into it. 

“Hello?” She asks indolently. 

“Hi Claire.” 

Claire sits back in her chair and waits, eyes taking in every detail of Cas, every detail of her father’s re-re-re-constituted flesh. _It’s been remade so many times since Jimmy ascended, maybe it’s not even really his anymore. Possession is 9/10s of the law and all that._

Cas stares back. Claire’s hair is shorter than it used to be, and her anger is quieter. 

Sam’s cell phone ring interrupts their standoff and, as if on cue, Claire asks, “Are you really an angel?” 

“Yes.” 

“Can you prove it?” She challenges. 

“If you want to see my party trick, you might want to put your phone in the other room, I’ve been told that large static charges are bad for electronics.” 

Claire sneers. “Look, while they were trying to bribe me with donuts this morning, Sam told me you were a decent guy, and Dean said that I shouldn’t kill you because it probably wouldn’t be very easy. So you’re _not_ susceptible to silver, but that means there’s _something_ that’ll kill you.” 

Cas has thinks back to the similar conversation he had with Dean not that long ago. 

“An angel’s sword can be used to kill another angel. Or you can probably just wait. I might fade away and disappear altogether.”

“That sounds less satisfying.” Claire nods at the doorway and says, “They said we all forgot about you, but that I’d met you before. Is that why you seem so familiar?—You look like my dad, but the longer I sit here the less you remind me of him. You don’t move like him, or sound like him, or smile like him.” 

“Yes, we met. Not under very good circumstances, though, I’m afraid. You can have the memories of those times if you want. Like I did for Sam and Dean.” 

“Yeah, no. They mentioned that too. Said those memories were very clear, and easy to remember. Did they tell you I work with kids now? Ones like me, who lost their parents.” 

Cas frowns at the non sequitur. 

Claire leans forward, putting her elbows on the table. 

“The memories I have of when my father left, of when he came back just long enough to leave again, of the circumstances surrounding my mother’s death…they’re all a little wrong feeling. I’ve known that for a while. I always figured it was PTSD or something, and I was misremembering things to protect myself. I’m not so sure that’s wrong,” Claire bites her lower lip. “I’m not sure I really want to remember them in agonizing detail.” 

Cas opens his mouth, closes it again and squints before saying, “So you don’t want to know?”

Claire sighs audibly, and shakes her head. “Yeah, I wanna know. But what’s wrong with just _telling_ me? Memories are nice and all, but they’re just memories. You’re not going to bring back my family right?” 

“No, I don’t think I could do that now,” Cas says. “What would you like to know?” 

“How about everything? Starting at the beginning. Why my family?” 

“Genetics, mostly. I needed a human vessel to complete the tasks I was given, and your father was my best option.” 

“So you possessed him, like a demon.” 

“Well, no black eyes. And we need permission first. You remember that your father was a very devout man?” Cas looks up at Claire, who’s listening carefully, and explains how he courted her father’s vocal but uninformed consent. “I didn’t spare another thought for Jimmy Novak or his family. They weren’t important.” 

“Thanks,” Claire mumbles. 

There are tears on her face, but Cas thinks it would be inappropriate to call attention to them.

"I didn't think I had a choice at the time. I had to get to Dean Winchester. I had faith in God's plan, and I was wrong."

"He shouldn't have said yes," Claire says with quiet determination.

"He didn't know. And when he knew better—the second time we met, I ignored Jimmy when he asked for my help. I waited until it was convenient, and," Cas swallows, not sure whether the truth is the best idea anymore, “You were too young to know what it meant when I asked you for permission to use your vessel. I implied I could save your family. At the end your father asked me to take him instead. He didn’t want you stuck riding shotgun in your own body; he wanted you to live a good life."

"He shouldn't have left us," Claire says, with all of the emotions left unfazed by the spell. 

_He didn't do that to you. I did_. Sharing his personal guilt would be too much of a relief at this point. She doesn't need that, and Cas doesn't deserve it. 

"I didn't find out what happened to you for years. I hadn't thought about it. When Jimmy's soul passed on to Heaven, I let myself ignore the consequences. I was...preoccupied, with other things, for a long time."

Claire's voice breaks through Cas' attempt to continue, "He's in Heaven?"

"With your mother."

"They helped me leave Heaven. A lot of people did, but everyone else who helped had been my _friends_ , or friends of theirs. Your parents have every reason to hate me, and I still don't know why…I think they're just really good people. They said to tell you they loved you, if I got a chance.”

This time Cas doesn’t resist the urge to get up and move around the table. He pulls out the empty chair next to Claire’s and reaches out but doesn’t touch her arm. “Could I give you that? Not all the memories. Just the one. Of your parents. They love you a great deal, you know,” he says quietly. 

Claire nods. 

Cas reaches up, and wipes tears from Claire’s face. _Something a good father ought to do, right?_ The memory he shares with Claire is very small, and for a moment, Cas isn’t sure why he’s sitting at a table with a human woman when he belongs in Heaven. 

“You found me again when I was older though, didn’t you,” Claire says, after a moment. 

“We did. Dean and Sam helped me.” 

Claire shakes her head. “I remember them fine. But I have this stuffed animal I keep in my office, and I take it with me when I go on house calls. Everyone loves hugging grumpy cat,” Claire’s smile stretches her blotched cheeks. “You gave it to me right?” 

“How…” 

“Once a kid asked me where I got grumpy cat from and, without hesitation, I told her it was a gift from my father. It didn’t make sense when I thought about it; Dad was gone long before I got the toy. But it didn’t seem _wrong_ either. I told myself I was thinking too hard about her case, trying to reach her. I don’t even remember why.” 

“The lady in the shop gave me the strangest look when I asked her to help me find something for you,” Cas says, remembering. 

Claire laughs, and Cas’ heart aches. 

“Okay, you two both look like you need some hot chocolate now,” Dean interrupts, sliding a mug in front of each of them. “Everything all right?” 

“Yeah, I think it is,” Claire says. 

Cas wraps both hands around the mug but doesn’t move to drink it. It’s gloriously warm and comforting. 

“You’re not going to come back and try to murder my friend in his sleep?” Dean prompts lightly. 

“MM-mm,” Claire intones negatively with a mouth full of hot chocolate. “Too hard, like you said. I want my knife back though old man.” 

Dean smiles, and unsnaps a small leather leather knife holster from his belt. He hands the entire thing to Claire. 

“You better not have scratched my knife.” 

“It’s nice, pretty sharp for a silver blade,” Dean says. 

“I like it that way,” Claire says with a smile, and drains off the rest of her cocoa. “Okay, I was promised a girls night once I finished bathing in the blood of my enemies,” Claire nods at Cas, “So I’m gonna hit the road. Castiel, are you going to be around tomorrow?” 

“I’ll be here,” he replies. 

“Cool. Maybe you can teach me some neat angel stuff?” 

“If you’d like,” Cas says uncertainly. 

Claire clunks her empty mug back down in front of Dean, and walks out. She stops to give Sam a hug before making her way out the door. Cas watches her go. 

When Cas turns back he finds Dean in Claire’s vacated seat, watching Cas. Dean reaches his right hand to the side of Cas’ face, and Cas can feel the rough callus of Dean’s thumb as it gently drags at the corner of Cas’ eye. 

Then Dean steals Cas’ mug of cocoa. 

 

* * *

**Sam - November 27, 2023. 9:00 AM. Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas stays at the bunker for a few more days. The Heaven thing must really be bugging him, but Sam doesn’t have any quick and easy solutions. Cas sits quietly in whichever room Dean’s working in, committing books to memory or something. He teaches Claire as many protective sigils as the two of them can come up with hypothetical situations for, and Sam makes them upload the entire list into the online hunter database. But after Claire goes home, Cas looks restless and takes off again on his world tour book search. 

Each excursion takes Cas to different places, for different reasons. Cas brings back all manner of strange books with mentions of angels in them, which Dean goes through without much complaint. Cas checks in about once a day, usually in person, and each time he listens to and shoots down whatever ridiculous hypothesis Dean manages to come up with. 

Cas returns from Iran on Thursday morning with an early copy of the _Book of Certitude_ by  Bahá'u'lláh, along with a keychain from Japan he gives to Sam insisting that it will “bring him good luck.”

“What if we just extract your grace entirely?” Dean asks. “Maybe that would fix it.” 

“If it did, it wouldn’t help any of the other angels. No one else has a vessel, and they’re stuck in Heaven. Plus if we tested it on me first, I’d be totally helpless. I wouldn’t be able to go back to Heaven, and if the curse is hooked into _me_ and not just my grace, I…don’t know if I’d be able to fight against it. I don’t want to be graceless again. No.” 

“Hmmmm.” Sam folds his arms and adds, “But maybe something more extreme like that could work. We have some holy oil around here somewhere, we could try trapping you?” 

“Worth a shot, but I don’t see how it could be permanent.” 

Sam starts pulling on the various strands of the hunters’ web they’ve tied together, pulling in favors and scraping every barrel to find any lore and myths about angels he can get. It’s the only other way he can think of to help Cas. 

On Friday afternoon, Cas gives them a single family bible from an old lady in Germany who insisted Martin Luther once licked it. He doesn’t think it will help, but apparently didn’t want to upset her by not taking it. 

While they’re eating lunch on Saturday, Dean gets a call from Cas, and they chat about whether Cas should pay for the books he’s taking or not. Sam doesn’t stick around to find out what conclusion they reach. 

On Monday Cas returns from southern Georgia with a pair of cursed suspenders in a ziplock bag with sigils printed neatly in sharpie on the outside. 

“I overheard a prayer, and it seemed like something I could find quickly,” he explains as he hands them over gingerly to Jody. 

Dean watches Cas a bit before he makes a suggestion this time. “How about angel reprogramming?”

Cas flinches in response. “I don’t know enough about the mechanics of the process to do it myself, or to instruct another,” Cas says to Dean, with wide eyes. “Besides, Naomi, Crowley…anyone I can think of who might have the right skills try is dead, and anyone else who might know is a resident subject of Heaven’s brainwashing program.” 

Dean relaxes, and Sam feels his own chest deflate. They haven’t had to use the chains in the basement in years, and he’d prefer to keep it that way. 

On Tuesday, they try trapping Cas in a holy fire circle, to no effect. Dean found one promising passage in the _Book of Certitude_ and Cas stares at it for a little too long before he leaves dejectedly. 

Sam and Dean listen to a summary of _all_ 16 books Cas deemed “too dangerous” for the libraries of Montreal when he returns from Canada with them Wednesday evening.

By the end of Cas’ description of book number sixteen, Dean looks ready to burst with impatience. 

“Cas, you can send people back in time,” Dean says, excitedly. “We just have to go back and stop ourselves from performing the trials to shut the gates of Heaven in the first place.” 

Cas smiles a little. “Not only would that not work,” he says as Dean’s face falls, “because time is immutable, but angelic presence was removed from all of living human memory, there’s no reason to believe we’d be able to insert angelic presence back into that history.”

“So, no?” Dean asks, confused.

Sam doesn’t get it either. Something on Cas’ face prompts him to interrupt their conversation though. “There’s something else too isn’t there?” Sam asks. 

Cas looks up, and his left eye twitches. He’s hedging. 

“Out with it.” 

“If we _were_ successful in rearranging the events of the past, it would have other consequences. When the spell took _every trace_ of angel it could reach and locked them all in heaven, that included every residual binding of Lucifer’s deal with Cain.” Cas pauses to look at Dean, before continuing. “There might be other ways to remove an archangel’s brand. In an alternate timeline, you might figure that out. Or you might not.” 

 

* * *

**December 8, 2023. 5:00 PM. Office, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam notices Dean getting antsy on Friday evening. Dean explodes at some poor schmuck on the other end of the phone line because they don’t have all of Denver’s microfiche digitized and searchable yet, and by the evening he’s alternating between checking his phone and glaring at people. Jody and Alex went out to the movies almost an hour ago, so Sam tries to drag Dean home for dinner with him. 

“Dude, you need to get out of here. You’re going nuts—everyone’s been tiptoeing around you all afternoon and it’s starting to be a problem. I’ll order Chinese and we can watch something terrible on Netflix.”

“No, I’m not that hungry,” Dean says, and checks his phone one more time, and frowns. “Cas has normally checked in with us by this time, Sammy, what if he shows up while we’re all gone?” 

And suddenly it all makes sense. 

“Oh. Ohhhh. All right but no more working, or, brooding, or whatever you’re doing. Go...watch internet porn or something. Stay out of everyone else’s way. And call if he shows up, maybe we can still do pizza or something? Cas can come too.” 

When Sam wakes up Saturday morning, he still hasn’t heard from Dean. So he and Jody decide to try ganging up on him. They leave for the bunker armed with breakfast and good intentions. They find Dean in the kitchen with a pot of coffee on the table next to him and his hair in disarray. 

It could be a lot worse, Sam figures. At least it’s coffee. 

“I’m sure he would’ve woken you up,” Jody tells Dean. She’s already got herself installed next to Dean at the table, with an arm around him. Sam leaves her to the hard work and sets about making another pot of coffee. 

“Nah.” Dean leans into Jody, and his voice shakes a little with as he tries to explain his latest in a long line of poor life decisions, “He’s too nice to do something like that. Besides, it’s not that. I just, couldn’t sleep. Nightmares y’know? Nothing new.” 

Sam nods automatically from the sink where he’s filling up the pot with fresh water. 

Jody hugs Dean a little tighter to her, even though neither of them could possibly be comfortable sitting like that. “Alright hon,” she tells him, before taking Dean’s coffee away and shove a breakfast burrito into his hands. “Eat something, then get some sleep. We’ll wake you when Cas gets home.” 

Dean grumbles, eats his burrito, and curls up in the comfy chair in front of the TV. He’s staring at what might be _Power Rangers_ on the TV when Sam comes to check on him, but he’s still not quite sleeping. 

Dean doesn’t move, but he must know Sam is there because he says, quietly, “I just want to know he’s okay. He shouldn’t make us worry like this. Not when we’re trying to help him.” 

Sam switches the box over to Netflix and turns on a documentary about Aileen Wournos. If he’s going to sit around babysitting his older brother, he’s not going to do it watching some kids’ show. 

 

* * *

**Sam - December 9, 2023. 1:22 PM. Den, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

There’s a bit of a whooshing sound in the doorway to the right of the TV around 1:22 pm. Cas looks scared and tired, like he’s fighting off the assimilation thing harder than usual. Sam wants to ask what happened, but before he can, Dean’s got Cas wrapped up in his arms like he’d been gone forever instead of just 48 hours. 

Cas face relaxes in relief and almost a bit of a smile until Dean takes a step back and lets all of his saved-up worry show.

“Where were you, Cas?” Dean sounds so much like a father chastising his teenage kid who stayed out all Friday night. Sam would snort if this weren’t such a serious conversation.

“There was a child in pain. In Norman, Oklahoma. It was something I could fix, so I did.” 

“And it took you TWO DAYS?” Dean starts to raise his voice, but Cas doesn’t seem any more perturbed by the change. 

“It was late. I went through the libraries at the University of Oklahoma and then sat in a the Waffle House off I-35 while I read through the _Bobby Dollar_ and _Matthew Swift_ novel series. They didn’t have very good coffee though—” 

  
“Cas who cares about the fucking coffee. That was two nights ago. Where were you all of yesterday?” 

Cas’ voice is entirely too calm when he answers, “In the Waffle House.” Sam raises an eyebrow, but Dean must make a face too because Cas is quick to append (although not as steadily) “I would assume.” 

“You assume. You don’t know, because you what, blacked out again? Cas, this isn’t just something happening to the other angels, it’s affecting you too.” 

“More than I thought, apparently.” Cas looks down at his empty hands.   
  
“Apparently? Really? You know, we’re trying to help you. Here. Not out in bumfuck Oklahoma or on the other side of the world. Here. Kansas.” Dean’s fingers point to emphasize each place.

“I know. And thank-” Cas’ words must not be what Dean was hoping to hear, because all of the sudden one of Dean’s fists is full of coat-lapel. 

“No, you don’t seem to know. You go off trying to fix _EVERYONE_ else. You’re not gonna help anyone if you keep going into fits like that. Did you realize they’re getting longer? You zoned out last week and we left you in the library for HALF A DAY, man. How the Hell are we supposed to fix you if you end up gone forever? I have a head full of memories that aren’t even really mine, and you wanna go off and get yourself disappeared NOW?” 

Sam thinks about stepping in on Cas’ behalf, because Dean’s being kind of an ass. On the other hand, he’s got a point. It’s not like Dean’s going to stop now anyway, and Cas seems pretty resigned to the whole thing. 

“Look, just stop flying off. Stay here, where I can at least try to help you. I don’t give a shit about the other angels. And how many answers have you found out there? Just stay. Please.” Dean’s hand falls from Cas’ coat and his voice crumbles with fatigue over his final _“please.”_ When Dean’s petition finishes, Cas looks about as steady as a semi-truck in a hurricane. 

Cas doesn’t say anything, and maybe Dean realizes what ridiculous demands he makes of other people, because he backs off with a quieter, “Think about it at least.” 

Dean grips Cas’ shoulder briefly on his way out. Sam _hopes_ he’s headed for bed. Cas turns to Sam, looking lost. Sam’s got no answers, and can only shrug. 

 

* * *

**Sam - December 9, 2023. 1:40 PM. Basement Archives, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam puts Cas to work the rest of the day, matching up a box of cursed objects with appropriate containers and signage. Sam makes careful records of each and adds them to the physical and digital filing systems. 

When the box is empty, Cas waits for Sam to finish printing out the last page to add to the ledger before asking, “Is it okay? If I stay?” 

“Yeah, Cas. You’re more than welcome. If you want—don’t stay just because Dean threw a fit about it though. Man, as long as you’re not getting in anyone’s way, you’re officially a member of our weird little underground Society of Letters and Hunting, or whatever it is that we’re called now. Ask Alex or Claire, they were coming up with acronyms the other day.” 

Cas smiles a little, and his shoulders relax. “Okay.” 

Sam shakes his head, but if everything’s okay, then he’s not going to mess with it. 

 

* * *

**Cas - December 12, 2023. 12:20 PM. Basement Archives, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

“Hey, you here?” 

“Hmm?” Cas looks up from the list of amulets he’s relabeling and cataloging, to find Alex hovering over the other side of the table. 

“Whew, good. Thought you’d checked out on us again.” 

Alex sits down at Cas’ table. 

Cas puts the ledger down, and rubs his eyes. He enjoys the feeling of his vessel’s eyeballs squashing under his fingers for a moment, before asking, “Was there something you needed?”

“Nope.” 

Alex props her steel-toed boots up on the table, and takes out her phone. Cas studies her until she lowers it to glower right back. 

“Do you hate me?” Cas asks. 

“No—well—no. Not you. It’s your fault he’s back, though.” 

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Cas knew he was inconveniencing the Winchesters, but he hasn’t put a lot of thought into the other people in their lives. Staying at the bunker for more than a day was an error. 

Alex rolls her eyes. “Whatever, man. You’re not so bad. Not like you’d understand anyway. You ever had someone who was supposed to be like family to you do something you didn’t want to forgive them for?” 

Cas frowns, and sighs. “Yes, actually. A few times.” 

Alex leans back in her chair. “Did you? Forgive any of them?” 

“I’m not sure it’s ever been within my power to do otherwise. Part of the programming, maybe.” Cas brings a finger to his own forehead. He wonders if he could heal himself, the way it’s easy to undo the damage to a human, or if it would make matters worse to even try. “Did _you_?” 

“No.”  


	10. Journey out of the Bunker

**Sam - December 16, 2023. 2:25 PM. Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

“C’mon, I need a ride home,” Sam says early Sunday afternoon, in an attempt to shake Dean out of his sullen attempts at research. 

“Don’t you have your own car now?” 

“Left it at home when I came in with Jody today. But she’s not going to be done for a bit longer and I need to go get steaks to make dinner tonight. You come with me, and I’ll feed you. Win-win!” 

Dean scrubs his face, but he’s still not convinced. “Don’t you have a daughter to do this stuff for you now?” 

“Just shut up and get your keys, asshole,” Sam says, not bothering to disguise his frustration with Dean the way he does with pretty much everyone else around here. It works, though. The ride feels too short, by far, to be in the Impala, even by way of the grocery store. 

It’s too cold to stand outside by the grill but they do it anyway. 

“Look at you!” Dean smiles as he twists the cap off a bottle of Dr. Pepper. “You finally learned how to cook.”

“Yeah, yeah. Jody wouldn’t even let me touch _her_ grill for over a year. She thought I’d burn something down or make something explode.” 

“You guys—you and Jody—you done a really nice job fixing up the house.” Dean shivers. “It’s fucking cold out here though.” 

“Go inside, you don’t need to suffer for me.” 

“Nah, this is the sort of normal people brother bonding activity you’ve always dreamed of, right? How could I take that away from you?” It’s getting dark and Dean’s looking down at the bottle cap in his fingers, but he sounds sincere. 

Sam just out his jaw, and flips his steaks. “I only blew up a propane tank the one time.”

“Yeah?” Dean asks.

“I was just gonna show Alex _how_ to make a bomb. She’s the one who wanted to see the explosion.” 

“You’re a terrible father,” Dean says, laughing at him. 

“Jody’s still mad at me about it too! No one even got hurt.” Sam smiles, and shakes his head. 

Dean scratches his chin and smiles too. 

Sam looks back at his grill, and rubs feeling back into his fingers. “Hey, just so you know, we’re gonna put gifts for you and Cas under the Christmas tree. You don’t have to get anyone anything—we don’t want you to think it’s some sort of obligation—but we’d like you to come for dinner. Charlie’s back in Oz again but Claire’s got some time off work and I think Jody invited Krissy, Josephine, and Aiden.” 

“That’s a lot of people, Sam.” 

“Yeah,” he replies with a smile. Sam is looking forward to Christmas this year. “Could you go grab one of the big plates from the cupboard? I think these are about done.” 

Jody shows up a little later with Cas and Alex in tow. 

“So we came up with a plan,” Jody explains between mouthfuls of steak and potatoes. “Alex asked Cas if he’s, y’know, crapping out at specific times of the day or something, but Cas doesn’t know when it happens every time. So we’re going to get him a journal. If you see Cas zoned out, make a note of the time and place and text it to him. Or better yet, text it to Dean—Dean you’re in charge okay?” 

Dean looks up from his plate and opens his mouth, maybe to argue, but instead just nods. Jody lifts an unimpressed eyebrow that prompts an, “All right, I got it,” out of him. 

“That’s settled then. Cas, have you been to Pennsylvania to check out libraries in that area yet? There’s a hunter there, his name is Aaron Birch, who needs an amulet we’ve got. I was going to send Alex out there with it, but it’d be quicker if she went with you instead of driving. What do you say?”

Jody’s plan is tidy. It effectively adds Cas to their small staff, and Jody’s suggested errands will take Cas around the world to places he can continue his research, but in a way that she can always send a chaperone along with. Not even Dean can complain. 

Dean _does_ complain when Sam asks for help carrying boxes of decorations up from the basement, but he and Cas help anyway. 

 

* * *

**Sam - December 19, 2023. 3:00 PM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Krissy and Josephine make the three-and-a-half hour drive down from Conway Springs a few days before Christmas and Jody puts them to work shelving Cas’ additions to the library. 

“Aiden couldn’t make it?” Sam asks them. 

“He’s got a new dog he’s training, and he didn’t want to ask our neighbor to feed them again. He’s got _five_ now. Guy needs a new hobby,” Krissy says, and shakes her head. 

“I think he’s just afraid Alex will actually carry through on her threats if he comes back,” Josephine adds.

Alex smiles coldly. “If he likes his arm so much maybe he should think twice about touching me with it as if he had permission, just saying.” 

Sam responds to emails and reads through the hunter’s forum as the girls shuffle books between stacks on the floor, boxes to be labeled and stored in one of the basement rooms, and the little bit of shelf space they could eke out on the library’s burgeoning shelves. 

Sam can smell mulled apple cider for half an hour before Cas appears at the library door. Before he can say anything, Alex accosts him. 

“Hey Cas, have you ever been to the top of Mount Everest? What’s it like?” She asks with an armful of books in Hungarian. 

“No, but I would imagine it’s cold and lonely. There are more interesting places to go.” 

“Do you speak many languages?” Krissy asks him.

“Languages are just information. I can know all the words, but I don’t always say the right thing. Humans are—amazing. Comprehending is different than knowing.” 

“O….kay then,” Krissy says while Josephine shakes with silent giggles. “So, if you want to go get lunch in Paris, maybe check out a few more libraries later this week, we could totally help with that.” 

Cas beams. “Thank you, I’d like that.” He leans towards them conspiratorially and says, “Dean wanted you all to know there’s hot cider in the kitchen, if you want some.” 

They smile and nod, putting down the rest of their books to continue interrogating Cas about the places he’s been. 

They’ve got him wrapped around their deadly fingers. Sam thinks Dean could learn a thing or two from them. 

 

* * *

**Sam - December 21, 2023. 8:00 AM. Map Table Room, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

When he finds out about their plans to go to France, Dean doesn’t see things the same way at all. 

“You’re going _where_?” Dean spits out at Alex, Josephine, and Krissy, who’re picking through the array of mittens, hats, scarves, and earmuffs spread out on the map table. 

“Paris. We’re going to check out the papers of Fonds Péladan in the _Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal,_ and see if the original manuscript of the _Book of the Penitence of Adam_ have anything useful in them, and look into the art, see if there are any references to—” 

Alex doesn’t finish her sentence before Dean’s cutting in, a little bit louder and harsher than before: “And you’re going to wander around a foreign country, where you don’t speak the language, with _Cas_ , who just what, does whatever you tell him?” 

“There’s _loads_ of tourists in France—we’ll be fine,” Krissy says, at the same time as Josephine retorts, “Who says we don’t speak the language?” Neither of them are any less adamant than either Alex or Dean. 

“Do you even have passports?” 

“Sure, I have a few. We’ll be fine, Dean.” Krissy’s glare could probably exorcise a demon. 

Sam tries to interject, because Dean’s not listening to anything the girls have to say. “Dean, they’re adults, and they’ve got just about as much experience as hunters as either you or I have.” 

“And what about Cas? Did you make a passport for him?” he asks Sam, and then turns back to the women. “What happens when he _checks out_ in the middle of a foreign country, how are you gonna get back then?” 

“HE’S FINE, Dean. Jeeze. We keep track, we text you every time. We check in with Jody when we’re out of town. We know how to use airplanes too, by the way.” 

"YEAH? Well he's not a tool. Cas isn’t a goddamned airplane, or some magical teleporter-slash-translator you get to use because you want to _check out the Louvre._ "

“ _I_ would like to check out the Louvre. You’re welcome to come with us if you’d like,” Cas says evenly from the hallway behind Sam. 

Dean deflates and shakes his head at all of them. “Fine, just be careful. Cas—” Dean shakes his head again. He doesn’t look angry anymore, just worried. 

Cas’ expression is harder to parse than Dean’s, but the lines across his forehead read like some of that worry has transferred from Dean. Alex’s eyes leak murder in Dean’s direction, and she’s biting her lip. She holds back whatever it is she _wants_ to say while Krissy and Josephine explain to Cas where exactly they want to go. Cas’ eyes don’t leave Dean either, until the four of them have teleported away. 

 

* * *

**Sam - December 22, 2023. 11:58 AM. Kitchen, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

A severe cold front rakes across the midwest and all Sam hears out of his brother (who’s purportedly reading up on the biophysics behind lobotomies and trying to compare human brains to angelic ones) are complaints about the cold and his knees. All morning. To _anyone_ who will listen. 

“Is it too late to send him back to Sioux Falls?” Jody asks, while Sam rummages through the cabinets in search of oyster crackers. 

“I can hear you, you know.” Dean responds, flipping a grilled cheese on the griddle. 

“Good.” 

“Nothin’ up there anymore worth leaving here for. B’sides,” Dean says, while readying another sandwich, “‘S even colder up there.” 

“We’re running low on holy oil though. Maybe when he gets back from France, you could talk to Cas about making a trip to Jerusalem?” 

Dean groans. “Really? Shopping trip?” 

“Oh you could pick up some Dead Sea Salt while you’re over there!” 

“You too, Jody? Do I even have a choice in the matter?” Dean asks, gesturing in her direction with his spatula. 

“No, not really. My sandwich will burn if you aren’t careful over there.” 

Dean levels a glare at Jody, whose focus is on the newspaper article she’s got pulled up on a tablet in front of her, making notes on the pad of paper next to it. Sam plants a kiss on her head, and leaves her to get out soup bowls. She’ll probably be making calls all afternoon, matching up hunters with every odd occurrence she can find from the last week. Every potentially strange situation gets checked. Monsters don’t take breaks for public holidays.

Dean must be working his angel magic again. Just as they’re finishing up lunch, Cas walks in and interrupts the argument they’re having about which hunters Jody should ask to take care of a wendigo taking out snowmobilers up in the Superior National Forest. 

“Cas!” Dean exclaims, and his shoulders relax. “Cas, I’m sorry. Erm, hang on.” Dean stands up and walks around the table before continuing, face-to-face, “I shouldn’t have yelled. And I shouldn’t be making your decisions for you either, you can do whatever you want.” Cas smiles, and Jody elbows Sam in the ribs to point a knowing look in his direction. 

“I value your opinions, Dean,” Cas says, lightly. 

“Well I value you being around. I’m old and crotchety and worry a lot. But I didn’t mean, that you can’t do the things you want to.” Dean’s voice is pitched low and aimed at his feet, so it’s hard to hear from behind, but neither Sam or Jody moves a muscle in their seats at the kitchen table. 

“Thank you, Dean.” Dean launches himself across the three inches separating the two of them, to enclose a startled looking Cas in his arms. Jody and Sam watch the tension go out of Cas, and when he hugs Dean back Jody gets a big smile on her face. 

“So how was Paris?” Dean asks, sitting back down at the table and reassessing his nearly-untouched lunch. 

“Okay,” says Cas, and steals a bite of Dean’s grilled cheese. He makes a face and leaves the rest of the sandwich on the plate. “We brought back a few things, but I doubt any will be more enlightening than what we’ve already got, but the art was,” Cas tilts his head—searching for a word maybe—“appealing. I think Krissy brought back more food than she did books.” 

“Krissy’s got good taste,” Dean says, and frowns a little at the sandwich before shrugging, and finishing his lunch.

 

* * *

**Sam - December 27, 2023. 2:00 PM. Den, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam stretches out in his favorite recliner while Dean plays with a supposed “ghost detecting” app on his brand new iPad, and one of the ESPN channels plays yet another bowl game. Despite what Sam told him, Dean had given gifts to everyone else, too. The EMF-detecting arduino keychains he’d made for everyone were actually pretty cool, too. Cas too had carefully wrapped various souvenirs purchased at the Louvre’s gift shop under Alex’s direction. 

Sam wonders if Cas is still wearing the grumpy cat tie Claire got him.

The Lobos score a touchdown and Sam sits up to watch the replay. 

“Look who’s awake!” Dean says, pointing the camera on his tablet in Sam’s direction. “Sorry, looks like you’re infested with ghosts. What sort of exorcism would you suggest?” 

“Wasn’t sleeping. Just resting.” 

“Hmmm,” Dean says, swiping his fingers through menus. “Holy fire, that might work.” 

“Speaking of!” Sam says, stretching. “Jody asked me to remind you this morning.” 

“I thought you guys just wanted me to shut up about the weather. You actually want us to go?” Dean asks.

“We’re still low on holy oil. C’mon, when’s the last time you went anywhere?” Sam asks back. 

Cas walks in wearing his ridiculous new tie. 

“Hey Cas!” Dean says, and his eyes crease with the force of the smile on his face. Cas’ hair sticks up in all directions. Maybe Cas passed out face first on one of the library tables again.

“Hey Cas, we were just talking about you.” Sam smiles at Cas too. He looks ridiculous. 

“Oh?” 

“Yeah. We were wondering if you’d make a trip to the middle east for some holy oil. Dean’ll go with, he’s not busy anyway.” 

“Okay,” says Cas, and sits down next to Dean on the couch to study the game on TV. 

“Aw c’mon Cas, they’re using us to run _errands_ ,” Dean says. 

”No Dean,” says Jody from the doorway, “We’re kicking you out of the bunker. Go do something. Anything. Away from here. Please don’t come back until tomorrow at the earliest. You need to get out more.” She levels a glare over her bowl of soup that catches everyone, even Sam. “I was wondering where you were all hiding. Who’s winning?”

Dean shrugs, and looks helplessly at Cas, who smiles and mirrors his shrug back at him. 

Sam explains college football to Cas while Dean grabs a duffel bag. When Dean gets back, Cas holds both of his hands out for Dean’s. Dean slings the bag over his shoulder and sets a hand in each of Cas’, takes a deep breath, and looks directly into Cas’ eyes. Sam paws at his back pocket for his phone, but he’s not quite quick enough. 

”Ready?” Cas asks. 

”I hate you all,” Dean says back, and grips Cas’ hands tighter and closes his eyes. Cas smiles and then they’re gone. 

 

* * *

**Sam - December 27, 2023. 2:30 PM. Den, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

“I don’t get it,” says Jody, after they’ve disappeared. “He spent all that time up north as a hermit, couldn’t Dean fall in love with a nice person _who wasn’t going to disappear_?” 

Instead of immediately arguing, Sam scrunches his face up. No, she’s not wrong. “Honestly, it’s refreshing he’s interacting with anyone at all.” Sam shakes his hair out of his face and wraps an arm around Jody’s waist. “Just, don’t say anything too loudly, he might hear you and figure it out.” 

Jody snorts. “On a related note, I was talking to Charlie about getting some security cameras installed in here again.” 

“Oh?” 

“Yeah, she got back this morning and called to say ‘hi.’ But we might get something on tape when Cas goes,” Jody waves her hand, instead of trying to explain it, “that we could use? Plus we’ve got a lot of people coming in and out. Little bit of extra security never did anyone harm.” 

“Isn’t that kind of weird? We’ll have all of our work on film. Besides, who’s going to set it up?” 

“Charlie said that the portals she’s been tracking down are almost all accounted for, and she’d be here as soon as that got dealt with.” 

Sam smiles. “That’s great! We’re going to have to have a party. Been a long time since we’ve had the _whole_ family together. Shame she missed out on Christmas.” 

Jody drags Sam’s face up to kiss it, before getting _the look_ on her face that means it’s time to work. People to save, etc., etc. 

 


	11. Maksutov-Cassegrain

**Cas - January 1, 2024. 9:00 AM. Jerusalem, Israel.**

Dean tries every sample of Dead Sea salt skincare product he can before they leave Israel. He’d been patient while Cas browsed book collections, so Cas lifts the large duffel bag full of their acquired goods to his shoulder and _watches_. 

When Dean finishes making his purchases, he comes back to Cas with an open jar, and a finger covered in goo. 

“Gimme your hands,” Dean says, setting down his bag and the open jar next to Cas’ feet. 

Dean works the lotion into Cas’ hands. The gentle massage of Dean’s fingers registers as warmth and pressure, and for a moment Cas has trouble parsing any sensations other than _Dean_. 

Dean smiles broadly. “Now your hands smell nice.” 

Cas sniffs one of them. He’s not sure what makes it _nice_ , but he smiles and nods. 

“Ready to go?” Cas asks. 

“I guess,” Dean grimaces. “Beats airplanes, I suppose.”

Cas picks up Dean’s bag and he puts his jar of lotion back into it before grabbing Cas’s shoulder, closing his eyes, and whispering, “There’s no place like home.” 

The two of them return to Kansas. Back where they’ve got no answers and where Dean’s kept busy juggling phones, playing FBI boss or talking hunters through good (and sometimes not so good) ways to handle the supernatural. 

When Cas notices the disconnected feeling he’s starting to associate with the blank spots in his head, he seeks out Dean. Listening to Dean calmly describe the safety precautions in electrocuting a rabid Rawhead is oddly soothing. Dean has a practiced tone of competent command that makes it sound like everything is going to be all right.

But Dean is helping people, and Cas feels useless and ineffectual in comparison. The old lore book PDFs a friend of Sam’s just sent are providing no new insights, and Cas will look through them again later just in case. _There’s no answer anyway. Sam and Dean can’t really save you at all, and they’re scared to try, because you’re so fragile._

 

* * *

**Cas - January 8, 2024. 11:45 AM. Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Barely a week after they return from Jerusalem, Dean gets a call about a series of eviscerated bodies from Krissy that has him rushing out of the house with a sawed-off and a nasty looking knife. Though Cas declines Dean’s invitation to go along, today’s better than yesterday, and Cas can still do _something_. 

Which is why Cas starts fixing the old telescope in the library. 

The telescope might be stuck in a bunker with not much view of the sky. It might not ever work again. Cas wants to try cleaning it and realigning the optics, and maybe (in Dean’s words) “with a little TLC” it will function correctly again. 

“Hey, does it work yet?” Alex has been watching quietly from the edge of the stage the old telescope sits. She waited fifteen minutes before speaking up. 

“Not yet.” Cas has spent most of the time taking things apart, and not much headway into making things better.

“If you get it working does that mean we’ll be able to fight aliens, too?” 

“No,” Cas says, and squints one eye in Alex’s direction. He doesn’t think it was a serious question. He _hopes_.

“Pssssh no fun.” _Definitely not a serious question._  

“Sorry.” 

“Whatever. You wanna get out of here?” And it’s not that she’s asking if Cas wants to leave, not really. Cas faces Alex fully, and studies the set of her shoulders: slightly hunched, the movement in her hands: fingers rubbing against each other. Hopeful, sort of worried. She wants to be somewhere else. 

“Anywhere in particular you want to go?” 

“Hmmm,” Alex hums with a smile, “somewhere warmer?”

Cas smiles back, and casts his sense of the world wider. The weather’s not great throughout large portions of North America, and it’s not a good time for coffee and cake halfway around the world. 

“You might want to go get your sunglasses.” 

Alex’s grin grows. 

 

* * *

**Cas - January 9, 2024. 4:00 PM. Mama Racha, Buenos Aires, Argentina.**

Alex, Jody, and three pairs of brightly colored sunglasses with different logos on the earpieces phase out of a dark stairwell in Kansas and into the bright afternoon light outside of a coffeeshop in Buenos Aires called Mama Racha. A look of challenge accompanies the neon orange pair of sunglasses when Alex hands them over Cas’ too-hot coffee. He slips them on and returns her smile. 

“This is nice and all,” Jody levels at Alex, “but was there a reason you dragged me to South America for coffee, exactly?” 

Alex blows on her sugary concoction, and sets it back down. “It’s so nice to be able to leave Kansas like this, sometimes, isn’t it?” 

The way Alex says it sounds like an unfinished thought, and Jody carefully sips her own drink instead of answering. Jody’s pointed silence draws the rest from Alex quickly enough. 

“I was thinking of going back to school. Get an EMT certification, y’know? Something useful. Is that weird?” 

“No honey, that’s great. Your whole world doesn’t have to revolve around us.” 

Alex relaxes into her chair and picks up her drink as she spits out, “You kickin’ me out?” with no outrage in her voice. 

“You want me to?” 

Alex tries to pout but she’s got a grin on her face. “How about you, Cas?” 

“I don’t need any medical training,” Cas responds.

“No, but how are you holding up?” Jody takes a lead in questioning. Her interrogation skills are supplemented by a mother’s gravitas, and it gives the words power. “Your world doesn’t have to revolve around us either. Dean’s a big bully, and he may mean well but you aren’t required to stay in Kansas any more than Alex is.” 

Cas smiles. “Sam said that too. I like it though—having somewhere I can stay. I’m sorry that I still haven’t found any answers…” 

“Oh, sweetie. You don’t have to be sorry about that! You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. Even if you aren’t looking for answers. We ain’t gonna kick ya out if you wanna give up.” 

Cas mumbles a distracted, “thanks,” and lets his attention scatter. Alex and Jody keep talking while they finish their drinks. Wanting to give up, that was never part of it. Cas managed to stay _Cas_ this long, there’s still hope the others could still remember their _selves_. It might make sense, logically, to give up, and they haven’t found any solutions _yet_. That doesn’t mean he won’t. Cas decides that he hasn’t failed yet, hasn’t failed his entire race yet, only because he hasn’t stopped looking. And he won’t. 

 

* * *

**Sam - January 10, 2024. 7:00 PM. Office, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

A few calls from old friends and new contacts has all-hands-on-deck in tracking a power struggle between shapeshifters and vampires along the Mississippi River.

Every time Sam turns around it seems like Dean’s wandered off in Cas’ direction. Everyone’s a little worried about Cas, and Sam, Jody, and Alex also make sure to check in on Cas whenever they have a free minute. The longer Cas has been around, the less likely it seems they’ll find an answer to his problems—Sam doesn’t blame the guy for spending more time working on the mechanical problems of the telescope than his own metaphysical ones.

Sam posts a notice for other hunters through their secure network to “be aware but try to stay out of the conflict,” while Jody contacts anyone nearby. The goal is to keep a hunter presence in human-populated places as a deterrent. Alex and Dean take turns fielding incoming calls and trawling news sources for further information. 

With everyone else too busy to go anywhere, Cas is grounded. His temperament and his health plummet. Even when he’s not catatonic, Cas is despondent. Dean makes no complaints about the more frequent buzzing of his phone, and picks up his work to continue it wherever Cas is. 

When Sam needs an extra set of eyes because hacked weather prediction software just doesn’t quite precisely translate to omens and each potential event’s gotta get checked for authenticity, he knows exactly where he can corner Dean. Everything from Dean’s posture where he’s sitting on the steps watching Cas work, to the smiling retorts he’s throwing into the phone says “leisure” instead of work and Sam’s got half a mind to get mad, until he gets close enough to make out the words Dean is saying. 

“—haven’t seen you in _ages_ and really that’s just uncalled for,” Dean is saying when he notices Sam’s glowering figure, “hang on a sec, we’re dealing with a Big Thing here, Charlie—by the way, Sam says hi.”

Sam melts a little. “Tell her to hurry up with those portals and come home.” 

“I HEARD THAT” scratches tinnily from Dean’s cellphone. 

“And when you get done, I could use an eyeball or two. Preferably attached to a brain,” Sam directs at Dean. 

“Roger that,” Dean nods as he puts the phone back to his ear.

 

* * *

**Sam - January 12, 2024. 12:45 PM. Office, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

"I see why you needed another set of eyes, this stuff is going to make you go blind," Dean’s voice comes swimming out from behind Sam’s wandering thoughts. He pulls over a chair beside beside Sam in the office, slides his reading glasses up onto his face, squints and adds, “isn’t this what you have the big screen on the wall for?” 

Sam grunts in agreement, rolls his eyes, and starts the needlessly complicated task of connecting his computer to Jody’s wall of monitors. Instead of poking fun at Dean’s failing eyesight he says instead, "So where’s Charlie at now?” 

“Cleveland,” Dean leans back in his chair as he watches Sam try three different cables trying to find the right one, “Closed down the portal there this morning, and she'll head down to the Ouachita National Forest in a few days to deal with the last one, when she's sure this one's _gone_ -gone. Then she promised she'd come visit. She threatened to be here for my birthday.” 

"Good—” Sam replies distractedly, as he finally finds the right adapter hidden under a stack of newspapers on his desk. He gets his weathermap-looking program of supernatural activity up on the big screen, before turning around, “That’s good, I’m glad. Gotta say, not having to worry about fae getting mixed up with people is a load of my mind though, too." 

Dean watches the big screen while he zooms in on the southern border between Missouri and Illinois, and then zooms back out again. “Do you think I hover too much? With Cas, I mean. Maybe I should give him some more space…” 

The topic switch is abrupt, Dean’s probably been thinking about this a lot, and finally decided to bring it up. 

“No fucking clue. He’s been kinda cooped up though, especially since we’ve been distracted with this,” Sam gestures at the map, and then rubs his forehead. “Maybe you should take him somewhere.”

“What, like, dinner and a movie?”

Sam raises an eyebrow, and shakes his head, “Or somewhere with fresh air. It seemed like your trip to Israel went well, that’s all.” 

It’s Dean’s turn to grunt in agreement. As the screen refreshes, a set of notifications blossoms on the map representing geotagged social media pings for “really strange.” In between weeding out false positives and making a few calls, they hatch plans. 

 

* * *

**Sam - January 13, 2024. 7:30 AM. Guest Bedroom, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam wakes up to the pain of sleeping in a bed that’s not his own anymore, a few messages from Garth that mean they’ll have another volunteer to direct hunting traffic over the next few days, and a hint of greasy breakfast food smell. He detours to drag Cas away from the book he’s got his nose in on his way to the kitchen. 

Sam makes coffee as Dean fills plates with food. Sam faces down a plate full of pancakes and bacon as Dean sits himself on a stool across from Cas. 

“What’s your plan for today, got anywhere interesting to go to?” Dean asks. 

“Everyone’s busy,” Cas responds, raising an eyebrow. 

It’s calm enough this morning that they can eat away from their computers, if not their phones, and Garth is arriving this afternoon. They won’t be so hard-pressed for people. 

Dean just grunts, and takes a swig of the coffee in his hand. 

“What about you?” Cas prompts Dean. 

“I could use a vacation.” 

“Aren’t you too busy?” Cas asks dubiously. 

“Yeah, seems like it. I might be able to sneak away today, though. We could go, I dunno, wherever you want to go. Antarctica or something.” 

Cas wrinkles his nose. “Antarctica is cold.”

Dean shovels food into his mouth before setting up the hook. “Sam did some looking into a passage I flagged in… I don’t remember which book,” Dean shakes his head, “But anyway, But he was trying to explain it yesterday, something about a journal?” 

Sam takes pity on Dean and explains his hypothesis that Thomas Aquinas’ personal journal—that Cas confirms he’s not come across—might have relevant information. From how it’s hinted at in a few places, Sam thinks it would be good to have it safe in the Bunker rather than out in the world anyway. He wonders if he’s any less obvious about his motives than Jody is when he proclaims that they’ve done fine without Dean and the past and they’ll be fine without him for a while again. He doubts it. 

Cas is unenthusiastic, but agrees to the quest readily enough. 

 

* * *

**Sam - January 21st, 2024. 9:00 AM. Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Dean and Cas are gone for a week, and come back with forced-cheerful tales of woe and triumph. Cas smiles when he’s supposed to, and he seems a little better off. 

But better isn’t the same as fixed, and as Dean gets pulled back into the mop-up operations, Cas drifts back to his telescope. 

A crashing noise in the other room brings everyone in the bunker to the dark end of the library. Cas lies with sparkling shards of shattered glass splayed out from the largest chunk of mirror, the telescope all-but-reassembled next to him. 

Alex grabs the nearest first aid kit, and snaps at Dean to get out of her way. He backs off, and she patches up Cas’ bloody hand. Sam frowns, Dean’s as good at field medicine as any of them, he wouldn’t’ve been in the way. But Alex has been short with him, and anyone else in the vicinity, since Dean arrived. _Maybe Jody knows why—but now’s not exactly the time._  

They move Cas’ inert vessel to Dean’s bed (again). When Sam checks in on him an hour later, he finds Dean sitting in the chair near the bed humming along badly to a quietly scratchy Zeppelin record. Sam raises an eyebrow, but Dean, in his reading glasses, flashes the news articles that he’s thumbing through on his tablet. Sam sighs, turns around, and makes to leave, but catches Dean’s shift in body language before he walks through the door. 

“There you are,” Dean says, voice soft and smiling. 

“I’m, what?” Cas grounds out, blinking and sitting up slowly in the bed. 

Sam watches from the door as Dean helps Cas sit up and runs his fingers comfortingly over Cas’ legs. When Cas looks more cogent, Dean leans in to check the bandages on Cas’ hand. 

“You cut your hand on the mirror when you fell. Can you patch yourself up without, y’know,” Dean clicks his tongue and mimics falling over with his fingers, “again?” 

Dean’s too busy fussing over bandages to see the look on Cas’ face, but Sam knows _horror_ written into a face better than most. Sam takes pity on everyone and goes to still the record player. 

“The mirror.” 

“It’s alright, we cleaned up the all the shards of glass. They’d spread out all over the floor,” Dean says, gently unwrapping Cas’ unblemished hand. 

“You threw it away?” Cas looks like he wants to cry and scream, and just hasn’t figured out which to start with, “but I need to fix it. I can make it better, why did you throw it away?” 

“Cas?” Dean finally catches up with Cas’ distress, and starts searching for a way to fix it. His hands travel up and down both of Cas’ forearms soothingly as he tells Cas, “You don’t need to worry about it, we can get a new one. It was dangerous. Look, you probably conked out because cut your hand on it.” 

“ _No_.” If anything, Dean’s making Cas more agitated, not less. “ _I can fix it. Dean, It’s not hopeless_.” 

Dean moves the short distance from the chair to the bed, pushing a pillow out of the way to sit next to Cas. He wraps an arm around Cas’ shoulders. Dean briefly looks confused when he notices Sam, as if he’d forgotten his brother was still in the room. Sam wrinkles his eyebrows and tries to nod encouragingly. Dean grimaces a little before pulling Cas closer. 

Cas lets his frustration turn to anger, and lashes out. “Why are you even spending time to help me; you never did that before. You don’t even know me except for what I gave you…” Cas trails off. He’s made his point. 

Dean frowns, considering. Sam folds his arms across the room, interested in Dean’s response, too. Cas isn’t wrong. Dean grips Cas’ shoulder more tightly. 

“Yeah. I don’t remember you. And I’m an asshole. But I know, not because of whatever you remember about me from before, but because I know how I feel right now. I learned, long time ago, to trust my gut. For better or worse. Me and Sam,” Dean looks up at Sam, “we didn’t let you into our heads and our home because you _claimed_ to know us. We did that because both of us felt like you were something missing from our lives. Nothing you ever said felt false. Hell, it felt more right than it sounded.” Dean lets his focus come back down to the man in his arms. “I don’t _get_ the angel thing. I’m sorry Heaven’s broken, and you can’t fix it. But I know, no. I _feel_ , that you’re important to me. You’re family. You need help; you got it.” 

Sam nods, and excuses himself. 

 

* * *

**Sam - January 22nd, 2024. 9:00 AM. Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Dean does all the research himself and gets Sam to help him order a new mirror to replace the old one. Dean stops making excuses to go find Cas and just does it: he talks to Cas a lot. Sam’s not sure if that’s more helpful for Dean or for Cas. By the time Charlie shows up, just in time for Dean’s birthday, Cas is actually doing a little better, though, so probably both. 

Charlie strongarms everyone into playing boardgames, and they gorge themselves on pizza, chips, and the sugariest soda from the convenience store. After the first round of Pandemic, that Sam and Dean try to cheat but still lose spectacularly, Cas excuses himself—ostensibly to catch up on the last few books Dean flagged for him, but it seems like (despite how well they seem to get along) Charlie’s the wrong speed for Cas right now. 

Dean looks torn for a moment whether or not to follow Cas, and even stands up to leave, but Charlie’s got him wrapped up in her tale of romance and woe. 

“Don’t worry old man,” Alex throws at Dean, shoving him back towards his chair, “I’ll go.” 

 

[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5093243)

 


	12. Alex Jones

**Cas - January 24, 2024. 7:30 PM. Hallway, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas walks down the hallway and breathes in the quiet cool of the curved tile. He reaches out with a hand to touch the wall as he expands his emotions through the spell-enforced and very solid walls.

The stack of books Cas has been working through sits in a pile on the floor next to the table everyone is sitting around in the library, chatting happily about portals and werewolf cubs. Cas can’t go back in there. 

Dean’s got a few piles of books stealthily claimed from Cas’ growing library of angel lore stashed in his bedroom. Each page describes a local overdensity of cellulose molecules as Cas collapses himself through the room back into himself. He could just as easily have pulled his physical form into Dean’s room as come back to it, but it seems more polite to sneak into Dean’s room uninvited by using the door. 

Cas bypasses most of Dean’s things for the short stack of books on the bedside table, replete with scrawled text on neon sticky notes sticking out from a number of pages. Those will do. 

A quiet scuffle at the door alerts Cas to the presence of a person there, but it’s not until Alex says, “You okay there?” that Cas looks back. 

“I’m…” Cas starts, and then nods towards the people in the library, “not very good at this,” he concludes, with a huff of air. He’s not good at the games, or at helping anyone. He needs a babysitter to go anywhere and they’re no closer to helping anyone in Heaven than before Cas showed up. “I shouldn’t be here. I should just go.” 

“Yeah?” Alex reaches into her pocket, and dangles a single silver key in front of her face. “Check it out—I lifted them off Dean.” Cas can feel his eyebrows furrow as Alex’s grin widens. “C’mon, where should we go?” 

“Dean will be unhappy when he discovers those gone.” Cas winces. It’s just a car, and Dean can defend himself. 

“Good.” Alex chooses ignore any angelic judgment in Cas’ voice, and she nudges the neatly stacked books on the dresser into slight disarray. Cas smiles at her small act of rebellion. She takes in a deep breath of air, and exhales, stretching her arms over her head in satisfaction. “Alright, I feel better now. I think I’m gonna go back. I like Betrayal.” Cas squints, but he’s pretty sure she’s talking about the game they were going to play next.

“You wanna come with?” Alex asks. 

“No, I think I’ll stay here.” 

Alex flips the keyring around her forefinger, thinking. “Good plan. Make sure Dean knows we’ve defeated him.” She tosses the keys to Cas. “You make a good partner in crime, Cas.” 

 

* * *

**Cas - January 25, 2024. 1:00 AM. Dean's Bedroom, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

When Dean walks in a little after one in the morning, Cas shifts to get off the bed. He sets his book on the bedside table, but Dean’s already collapsing onto the bed before Cas manages to extricate himself. Some grumbles come from Dean’s pillow’s direction, and Cas can just make out a muffled, “whatever don't get up, I'm just not going to lose another game of Catan to Jody. She's _mean_ and I'm too old for this shit." 

So Cas picks up his sticky-noted book with notes in Dean’s steady hand and continues running computation after computation based on each potentially-relevant myth as he reads. 

Almost an hour later, Charlie pokes her head in. 

Dean is curled up at Cas’ hip and fast asleep, so Cas makes the proper shushing motions with his hands, not wanting Dean to be disturbed. Charlie pulls out a wicked grin to match her phone, and mouths “blackmail” as she appears to take a series of pictures. 

Sam joins Charlie at the door, silently judging, and laughing a bit into Charlie’s shoulder. With Charlie around the bunker for the rest of the indefinite future, he and Jody are planning to take a few days off. When Charlie’s satisfied, and leaves with her pictures, Sam smiles broadly and waves his farewell too. Cas nods, and Sam closes the door silently as he leaves. 

Cas listens to Sam report everything to Jody in vivid detail, their snickers echoing softly off the bunker walls. Cas should probably leave now, but Dean's hand has curled tightly into Cas’ sweater and removing it would certainly wake Dean. Cas closes his book, sets it on the shelf behind the head of the bed, and waves two fingers with the turn of his wrist in the direction of the light switch. When the room is dark, Cas runs his fingers through Dean's hair.

 

* * *

**Cas - January 28, 2024. 9:30 AM. Telescope Platform, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

“I read about you, you know,” Charlie says as she installs a camera over the telescope nook’s entryway. “I mean, I’d thought up until now, that those parts of the books had more embellishments and deviations from Sam and Dean’s past than the first ones did. Artistic license and all that? But I guess they were right all along.” 

“When we met, you asked me if we’d just become best friends. Just from having met me. It must have been because of the books.” Cas says, pulling his eyebrows together. 

“Yeah, uhm. Sorry I don’t remember that. If you still need a best friend, though, I’m sure we can work something out.” Charlie smiles and climbs off her ladder. 

When she finishes installing cameras, she comes back to the library with her computer. She nods her head along to the music playing through her headphones as she works on updating the various computer systems. Cas continues refurbishing the telescope. Neither Charlie nor the telescope stress over him, even when he spaces out for long periods of time.

Dean stays busy covering phone calls with Alex while Sam and Jody are out of town, though they both check in (separately) when they get a moment.

 

* * *

**Cas - January 31, 2024. 10:00 AM. Den, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

“All right, who wants to do a salt-and-burn?” Jody asks the room at large. 

Charlie and Dean spent most of the night arguing about Halo tactics as they tried to teach Cas the game. He’s still trying to optimize some of his techniques but he thinks he’s finally figured it out. Charlie fell asleep in the recliner hours ago, and Dean’s drooling on Cas’ untucked shirt. 

Dean wakes quickly at the interruption, but it’s Charlie who volunteers to check it out once she’s gotten her hands on some caffeine. 

“Either of you want to ride along? Winchester?” she asks, yawning. 

“I don’t know, Charlie. My knees…” Dean starts, rubbing his eyes. 

“Alex’ll go with you,” Jody says, and that’s that. 

“Mmm.” Charlie gets up and asks Jody for copies of the news articles. 

Cas takes a turn answering phones that afternoon while Dean changes the oil in the Impala. And then in Sam’s truck. And in Jody’s Bronco. And in Alex’s older Nissan SUV. In between hunter check-ins and lore queries, Cas lets his senses sift through torrents of uplifted prayer, longing, hope, and radio signals. Nodes in his grace resonate with the deliberate beats on angel frequencies, but Cas filters those out and doesn’t let his grace draw on Heaven’s power. Not right now, it’s too easy to lose time that way. Cas jots down a few notes; a prayer for help against a monster coming from the middle of Wisconsin, a litany of fearful prayers against evil spirits coming from two sources close together in a...trailer park in Arkansas. Hunters may be able to help these people. One thread of National Public Radio modulations casts a voice out, speaking on the power of positive thinking. Cas can feel the corner of his mouth quirk up as the voice mentions “longer life spans” and “less stress.” He supposes it’s a comforting belief system. There’s not much left Cas can believe in anymore. 

 

* * *

**Cas - February 1, 2024. 4:00 AM. Dean's Bedroom, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Dean’s cell phone blares an obnoxious default ringtone at full volume close to four in the morning. Cas can hear Charlie’s panicked voice through a large amount of static and Dean’s short but purposely calming responses before he reaches the door. Alex is hurt bad, and they can’t go to a hospital. Cas enters Dean’s room without knocking. 

“We can help her. Let’s go.” 

Dean squints at Cas’ intrusion, takes a deep breath, nods, and relaxes. He goes back to talking with Charlie on the phone, now wedged between his ear and t-shirt-clad shoulder. He asks her for their exact location, and keeps up a string of basic first aid instructions as he drags on a pair of jeans. He grabs the pair of glasses off his bedside table and a crumpled flannel shirt from the floor. Cas hooks a hand around Dean’s elbow to steady him upon landing and hurls their combined set of wavefunctions at the speed of light to where Charlie is desperately attempting to staunch the flow of blood from three wide gashes in Alex’s side. 

Cas throws wide his connection to Heaven, and channels power through his vessel’s fingers into Alex, shaping it to fix her body’s idiosyncrasies. Everything gets put back in its proper place. Dean’s hands balance out gravity at Cas’ forearm and armpit and hold him in the physical world as Cas shuts out as much of the thrumming power coursing through him as he can. For a fraction of a nanosecond Cas wonders if it would be “less stressful” to think _positively_ about Heaven’s pull on him, and to just let the assimilation drag him back. As he feels his physical body slag into Dean’s side, Cas holds onto the unstable equilibrium point that is _himself_ , and pushes with everything he’s got against Heaven’s optimization. 

 

* * *

**Cas - February 2, 2024. 10:12 AM. Dean's Bedroom, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

For the fourth time since re-entering the Winchesters’ lives, Cas comes to the realization that he’s prone in Dean Winchester’s bed at the Men of Letters’ bunker with no memory of coming to be in that position. His cell phone, handily left charging on the bedside stand, tells him it’s been nearly two days since they’d gone to help Alex. Cas breathes in the state of the bunker with intangible lungs. Alex is safe. Charlie is safe. Dean is….grumpy. 

Other than Dean’s attempts at pouring cheerful fortitude through a phone, the afternoon is quiet. Cas is drawn to the open garage door downstairs, where Dean is sitting on the hood of his car, staring at snow melting off bare trees. The hunter on the other end of the line (a guy named Ennis) wants more information on shapeshifters. Times-of-death don’t line up with last sightings. Bodies are strangely marred, but they think it has to do with the murderer’s methods. 

“Nah man, silver knife’s gonna do you the most amount of good. Shapeshifters’re a nasty piece of—” Dean’s repeating himself when Cas purses his lips and slips the phone from Dean’s hand. 

“Sorry for interrupting,” Cas says into the phone, but staring straight at Dean. “You may want to look for a ghoul, instead of a shifter.” 

“Uh-,” comes the hesitant tone from the other end of the line. 

“Decapitation should kill either one, but silver doesn’t work on ghouls the way it does on shifters. Not to say you can’t use a silver knife, but they aren’t the easiest weapons for decapitations.” 

Dean’s frown is considering, and he nods as he takes the phone back. He pats the hood of the Impala invitingly while exchanging a few more quips and niceties, with some advice thrown in. “There was this one time I got locked into a room with _two of those fuckers_...” Dean shifts his weight as he talks, bumping into Cas and running his free hand through his own hair, and waving it in front of him to punctuate anything important. Dean’s thigh is warm against Cas’ in the chilly garage.

The room quiets when Dean shoves his cell phone back into the pocket of his jacket. Sun streams in, but doesn’t quite reach them from this angle. Dean leans into Cas’ shoulder before turning crows feet-adorned eyes directly on Cas with a shit-eating grin on his face. 

“God Cas, what’d I ever do without you around?” Dean’s voice lacks acerbity, and doesn’t fill up the giant room, but quietly fills the space between them. 

Cas obligingly rolls his eyes. 

 “Y’know, Alex is lucky I love you, else I’d kick her ass for needing your help.”

It’s not a terribly serious proclamation, Cas knows that. His entire sense of the world still collapses on Dean, and everything feels constricted and exciting. Even if Dean’s logic makes Cas’ eyebrows draw inward. 

“I’m glad you’re back with us. We had to haul your ass all the way back to Charlie’s hatchback before we could go back out and finish off the meanest poltergeist I’ve _ever seen_ ,” and Dean is staring out in front of them again, one hand in his pocket as the other drums out emphasis on Cas’ knee. “We brought the fucker down, though.”

Cas swallows down the tight feeling that feels like something will burst from his throat. The mechanical motion does nothing. 

“C’mon, I want coffee,” Dean’s voice breaks through Cas’ high-optical-depth-haze of cogitation at the same time he feels the tug of fingers at his wrist, pulling him towards the kitchen. “You’re always drinking coffee, do you have a favorite?” 

“No, it’s always a very nice but approximately equivalent blend of molecules and energy.” Cas knows the words come out drily, but he tries to say them with a smile on his face. “It’s not just about the coffee, you know.” The smile pulls too much at his lips, but it’s okay because Dean’s attention is elsewhere. 

“Well you can’t do much people watching in here,” Dean says, gesturing around while focusing intently on coffee machinations, “but the coffee will still be hot, have caffeine, and be made of molecules. That okay with you?” Dean is poking fun, or maybe hopeful? It’s hard to tell without seeing his eyes. It doesn’t matter much as Cas feels his face smooth out into a much more comfortable smile. 

“Yes Dean, that’s okay with me.” 

Cas likes people watching just as much when it’s only Dean to watch, as when he’s watching all of humanity.


	13. Interlude: July 20, 2016

The spell, all told, is pretty straightforward. Kill an Angel (they’ve been looking for Metatron anyway), restore a Fallen Angel to grace (slightly harder, but Hannah has a list), and to free an Angel from their earthly bonds (a few of the Angels in Heaven volunteer for the _honor_ of releasing their vessel). Hannah is surprisingly on board when Cas meets to talk to her about it. To keep her family together and safe, locking the doors only makes sense. 

The other half of Dean’s plan takes more effort. Eventually Cas manages to convince Hannah that keeping the remaining Archangels out of Heaven is in everyone’s best interests. 

 

* * *

 

 

Dean waits a full minute after an angel performs the final invocation of the spell to close Hell. He waits for confirmation: yes, the demons have been vanquished. No, they can’t escape. Dean hugs Sam, and Jody, and Cas before giving the remaining angels another minute to ride the escalator up to Heaven. He prays to Cas, in words he doesn’t know how to say out loud. 

Dean finishes the spell to lock up Heaven and all of its angels. 

 

* * *

 

Cas slides down the black wall opposite door #42. He listens. He knows Dean will be okay, and that leaving now is the _right thing_. Dean doesn’t need him. Never did. Last night was selfish, and wrong, and so very human, and it was enough. It has to be. Cas knows he loves Dean, more than anything. 

And then everything blanks. 

And then Cas knows nothing.  


	14. Prayer

**Sam - February 2, 2024. 9:00 AM. Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas stops having fits of non-existence.

It’s not until Jody asks Dean if he’s got his phone set to silent that they even really notice. In retrospect, Sam’s seen no sign of comatose-Cas recently, and Dean’s been downright pleasant. 

Cas thinks it might be Dean’s coffee, or something different about the water or food that comes into the bunker’s magical fields. It matches up; the last time anyone’s aware of one of Cas’ episodes was before he started drinking coffee with Dean every day. To test his hypothesis, he stops drinking the coffee—and doesn’t relapse. 

Still, even after they’ve established that it’s _almost certainly_ got nothing to do with coffee, Dean thinks they should try it in Heaven. He finds Cas where he’s cross-referencing news articles in the office with Sam, and leans over Cas’ shoulder to hand him a thermos. 

At Cas’ questioning glance, Dean says, “Worth a try, right? You came here to figure out how to fix your family, I mean. They all seem like dicks and all, but _you_ care about them, so that makes it important. Least we can do is try, right?”

Cas, smiles, nods, points out a few more headlines for Sam to follow up on, and turns back to Dean. 

“I’ll be back,” he says, clasps Dean’s upper arm, and vanishes alone. 

For the next day and a half, Dean puts on small hopeful smiles whenever he knows someone’s watching, and doesn’t make a single complaint. Things are eerily peaceful, and Sam wonders if it will stay like this. 

 

* * *

**Sam - February 6, 2024. 11:00 AM. Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas returns with an empty thermos and an emptier expression. It was a long shot, but Dean had thought it might work, and so Cas had too—only Dean bounces back to his strangely cheerful self as soon as they’re sure Cas is all right. 

Cas is visibly shaken, and he explains how it was still difficult to resist the siren song of Heaven’s uniformity. 

“Hannah, she’s a friend of mine, I tried to bring her with me. I thought maybe, if I could get her out, that it would help. Every bit I dragged her from her proper position was more difficult, and felt like she was slipping away from me.” Dean and Sam both listen carefully, but Cas’ descriptions of the angels in Heaven are still confusing at best. “When it got too hard to carry both herself and me, and I let her go, she relaxed immediately back into the stoic oscillations of the angel web.” 

Cas shrugs into himself. When Dean tries to make a suggestion about spells they might’ve set off in or out of the bunker, Cas mostly ignores him in favor of slinking off to a stack of books sitting by his finally-fixed telescope. 

Sam wonders if the old half-dome even opens, or if Cas fixed a telescope that’s got no possible way to reach the sky. 

Sam shakes his head and gets back to work. Cas spends the next few days retracing his every step leading up to the moment they declared him cured, without any success. 

 

* * *

**Sam - February 8, 2024. 5:00 AM. 500 Locust Street, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam squints out their bedroom’s window into the darkness. He buries his face in Jody’s hair and inhales. A few minutes of measured breathing go a long way—but Sam gives up on sleep. He wraps the blankets carefully around Jody and kisses her forehead before leaving. 

Sam’s not the only one awake too early, though. There’s a single light on in the library, and Dean’s Wikipedia surfing urban legend pages. His coffee mug is almost empty, and it looks like he’s scrolling through pages without really reading them. 

“Bad night?” Sam asks. 

“Was helping Claire track down the right kind of container for this old set of cursed keys ‘til midnight. Didn’t realize it’d gotten so late. Then when I looked around, I couldn’t find Cas. Figured I’d wait up a bit for him.” Dean squints one-eyed up at Sam. “I didn’t make coffee ‘til I gave up on sleep, at least. What’re you here for so early?” 

Sam grunts. “You know how it is… some mornings you get woken up, and there’s no way sleep’s going to happen anymore. There more coffee in there?” Sam nods towards the kitchen. If he could remember the nightmares he had, maybe he could say something about them. As is? Well, he knows that Dean understands, even if he doesn’t try to explain. 

“Mmhmmm.” Dean hums his affirmative before shutting his laptop and following after. 

 

* * *

**Sam - February 8, 2024. 1:00 PM. Office, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam almost misses the buzz of his missing cellphone from the office as he calls it from his other cellphone. Sam rarely sees Dean and Alex in the same room, much less speaking to one another. _Which_ , he thinks, _might have something to do with the raised voices._

“Why are you even still here?” Alex sneers.

“What does that have to do with leaving lights on _in the room I’m currently using_?” 

Alex puts her hand up as if it might stop Dean from saying something he regrets. “No, don’t. Cas is fixed, that's all you’re here for right? He’s too busy to be around here much anymore anyway. What d’you think he’s going to do when all his angel buddies are cured too, hang out with us down here?” 

Dean starts, "I…" and lets out a deep breath of air. 

“Why don’t you go back up north. Leave us alone again.” 

Dean takes a moment to study Alex with hard eyes, and she lifts her chin defiantly, certain as Sam is that Dean will fight back. The apology he gives Alex is the last thing Sam expects. 

“I fucked up,” Dean’s wrinkles twitch a little, “I shouldn’t be here should I—I’m sorry for invading your space, your home. I’m sorry for yelling at you about going to France with Cas. I was wrong. Alex,” and Dean watches her lack of reaction, but she doesn’t interrupt as he continues, “I’m sorry for the inappropriate shit I said before. I’m sorry for being a drunk asshole, and letting it hurt other people.” 

Dean lets his gaze fall on Sam in the doorway, letting Sam know that that includes him, too. 

"Anyway, you're right. As soon as I make sure Cas is _good_ , I'll get out of your hair." 

Alex twists her mouth up, nods, and says, “Good.” 

Dean shrugs one shoulder. “Thanks for listening.” 

“Doesn’t mean I forgive you.” 

Dean nods, gets up, and leaves. 

Sam is left entirely dissatisfied with the interaction he just watched, and feels the need to stand up for Dean, who didn’t even lift a finger to defend himself. He takes a step into the room, catching Alex’s attention, and says, “Whatever happened can’t be worth holding a grudge like that, Alex. Dean’s trying hard. Whatever happened before—that wasn’t him.” 

Alex scoffs, “Is that what you tell yourself? You’re the same as him, aren’t you? God, if I want to actually help people, this isn’t how I want to do it.”

“Alex—” Sam doesn’t know what to say any more than Alex wants to listen. 

“Whatever,” she spits at him, and she walks out. 

Sam redials and waits for the telltale buzzing under a stack up papers on his desk to pinpoint the phone he’s looking for. He consider what he really does believe about Dean; he hasn’t come to his brother’s defense like that in years, with no understanding of what Dean really did wrong. As Sam pulls a glass of water from the tap, he thinks about how old habits are the scariest. The ones you don’t even realize you have, those’ll get you killed. 

 

* * *

**Sam - February 8, 2024. 1:09 PM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Alex isn’t the only one who’s grumpy. Cas has been a quiet storm of frustration with no outlet since he came back from Heaven. Dean might be content that Cas seems to be okay, but his good mood hadn’t rubbed off on Cas no matter how much time the two spend together. 

Sam pages through contacts, hoping _this one_ is the old phone that had Tracy Bell’s contact info. If he can confirm just _one more thing_ they can wrap up this case, then he can let Charlie know exactly which tomb to desecrate—but of course, Dean’s not really in a good mood anymore, _and how is anyone supposed to get anything done with all of this hostility._ Dean must’ve explained his plans to leave because Sam can _hear_ Cas’ frustration before he gets to the library. 

“You haven’t solved anything, but from your perspective everything _seems_ fine, so you’re going to run away now?” 

“No, Cas, I just—I don’t belong here anymore. You know that. I screw things up. I don’t know how you’re doing so much better now, and it’s certainly nothing to do with me.” Dean smiles self-deprecatingly. “It’ll be weird to adjust back to being alone, but it’s not like it’s something new. Besides, you’re doing great, and you’re going to fix Heaven, and then you won’t need me here anyway.” 

“So, just like that, you’re leaving?” 

Dean hangs his head and walks out of the room. Cas collapses into the nearest chair. 

“I’ll go talk to him, see if I can talk some sense into him?” tries Sam, but Cas just sighs dejectedly.

Sam decides to take Jody out for dinner tonight somewhere far away from all of these people. 

 

* * *

**Sam - February 9, 2024. 1:03 PM. Office, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

A day later, Alex storms back into the office where Dean is hiding at Jody’s desk pretending to wait for a phone to ring. Jody and Sam, just back from lunch, follow tentatively after her. 

“What the Hell did you say to him, Winchester?” Alex starts off. 

Dean shrinks into his chair. 

Alex rolls her eyes before continuing, “You can’t tell me that, after all of this,” and she emphasizes her statement by spreading her arms wide, “that you convinced Cas you were going to abandon him? I know you’re not the greatest guy in the world, but _even I_ don’t believe that. So to reiterate: What. The. Hell.” 

Next to Sam, Jody watches quietly with one imperiously raised eyebrow. Sam follows suit and keeps his mouth shut. 

“I can’t do both, Alex,” Dean tells his hands. “I can’t stay here for him _and_ leave for you. I fucked up enough by you already, and Cas? Cas’ll be fine. He’s way stronger than we are.” 

“Bull—shit.” Alex looks over her shoulder, notes Jody and Sam, and arches her eyebrows and nods before turning back to Dean. “Sounds awful convenient to me, that you’d start caring now, of all times. What happened to doing something good with your life? You fucked up, so what. You keep fucking up. Great! Why don’t you do something about it?!” 

Dean listens intently to every word Alex says, nods, and says, “Yeah, you’re right. The sooner I get my fucked-up ass out of his life, the better.” 

Alex rolls her eyes and says, “No, you’re not leaving,” and shakes her head side to side to emphasize her command. “You’re gonna march your ass back to Cas, _where it belongs_. Get your shit together. If you like him so much, stop making him sad.” Alex closes her eyes, and wrinkles up her nose. “You can stay here, I’m… I’ve been thinking about this for a while—so don’t think this is your fault or anything—I’m going to go stay with Claire. I need to go—somewhere else.” Alex turns around fully to face Sam and Jody now, saying, “I was going to tell you this, but hey, look, family discussion time! I looked into schools, though I’ll probably wait until next year. I’ve got the bank account Charlie set up for me, and I’ll be alright. If Dean stays here to help you, you won’t need me, right?” 

Jody’s calm observational demeanor melts into the face of a worried mother, and there’s praise and worry and hugs exchanged between them. Sam does his own version of familial support, walking over to slug Dean in the shoulder. 

“Come on,” Sam tells his brother. 

Dean looks up sullenly, butt planted firmly in Jody’s desk chair. 

“Up,” Sam points out the door. “Or I’ll push your chair into the library. That actually might be kinda fun,” Sam nods to himself, and smiles threateningly. 

Dean relents, letting Sam help pull him to his feet. As they walk past Jody and Alex, Dean cowers away from them. 

Alex rubs a shining eye with the heel of her palm, looking ready to say something, but Jody walks over before she has a chance. “Dean,” she says, twisting her mouth with words that won’t come out. Instead, Jody wraps Dean up in her arms and hugs him. “You’re gonna be okay,” she says, and pushes him out the door.

 

* * *

**Sam - February 9, 2024. 1:15 PM. Library, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

“Cas, buddy,” Dean starts, at a loss. Sam shoves him a little closer, then backs off to give them some space. “I’m sorry,” Dean shifts his feet, looking thirty years younger than he ought to. 

“Sorry that you’re going to run away?” Cas says, coolly. 

"No, not—look, if this all means so much to you, then it’s important to me too,” Dean winces, probably knowing exactly how awkward he sounds, but steamrolls right ahead. “I _get_ that family needs to be protected. God knows I’ve done a terrible job, but it’s important.” 

“I wouldn’t count on it, Dean. Even if God knows I don’t think he cares,” Cas sounds resigned, but not mad anymore. 

“Well, there’s something at least.” Dean reaches up and rubs a thumb across Cas’ cheek. “You’ll figure it out. What haven’t you tried yet, hmm?” 

Cas and Dean put their heads together in hushed tones for a while, sitting on the steps in front of Cas’ telescope. Sam leaves them there, and gets back to work. 

 

* * *

**Sam - February 9, 2024. 6:45 PM. Office, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Sam and Jody stop by the office that evening to say goodnight to Dean and Cas on their way home, but only Dean is there. 

“Cas is gonna check on some stuff in Heaven,” Dean says with a face full of unspoken worries. 

“You’re welcome to stay with us while he’s gone, Dean,” Jody offers. 

“Thanks Jody. I think I’ll just wait here though.” 

“All right. We’ll see you tomorrow then!” 

Each day Cas is gone takes its toll on Dean. By the time Charlie’s back from her hunt, Jody’s got Dean running around on shopping trips and doing inventory. 

Charlie tries her damnedest to bully Dean into being a better friend, but he’s not having any of it. 

“Sam, Jody, you got anything going on tonight?” She asks, once the pizza they ordered is gone. 

“Not unless someone somewhere has an emergency—knock on wood,” Sam responds. 

“I was thinking, Dean owes me a chance to reclaim my Mario Kart title. If you guys want in…” 

“No,” Jody shakes her head. “I think I’m good, but thanks.” 

“Suit yourself,” Charlie shrugs. “Sam?” 

“Oh, just give it a rest, Charlie. No one wants to play your stupid games with you.” 

Charlie’s face dances from between offended and thoughtful at Dean’s outburst. 

“No, Dean. You promised.” 

“Really?” Dean asks, looking over at Sam and Jody. “We’re gonna do this now? Here?”

“Promised what?” Sam asks. 

“Yeah, now. Sam and Jody care about you too, you shouldn’t just run away from that,” Charlie tells Dean. 

Dean slumps in his chair. “I’m not drinking again, you don’t have to worry.” 

“Good for you.” 

“Hey, Charlie, what’s this about? I mean, it’s just a game,” Sam asks, trying to defray the situation. 

“Dean _promised_ me he’d talk to me if he was having trouble with anything. I figure, since he hasn’t said anything, he’s just being an asshole for the Hell of it. Or am I missing something, Dean?” 

Dean’s shoulders fall. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” 

“Too bad.” 

Dean grabs his empty glass off the table, and tips it a bit as if it still had liquid contents. “Why not. I scared Alex off—Sam left me for Jody a long time ago. Cas is gone again and you’re leaving soon anyway.” Dean bears his teeth. “Fine, let’s talk about it, what do you want to know?” 

“Wait, is that your problem? Everyone leaving?” Charlie asks. 

“What? No. That’s just—“ 

“Dude, Cas isn’t gone for good,” Sam says. Jody nods succinctly in agreement. 

“Actually, that explains why you’ve been acting like an asshole,” Charlie says. 

“No, I’m an asshole because that’s just who I am. People leave _because_ of that. They always have. Not the other way around,” Dean argues. 

“Do you trust me, Dean?” Charlie asks. 

“No,” he says, and then, “OW!” when Charlie punches him in the shoulder. 

“Do you trust me?” She asks again. 

Dean looks her in the eyes before answering, “Yes.” 

“If I was going to leave because you’re an asshole, I would’ve left a long time ago. And your brother’s sitting right there. He didn’t leave you for Jody, you dumbass, you just have a bigger family now. You really think Cas won’t come back?” — she pauses while Dean shrugs— “And Alex is leaving to go back to school. No offense, but get over yourself.” 

Dean nods, and lets Charlie talk him into playing video games with her all night. 

Sam and Jody stop by Alex’s apartment on their way home to check in on her. It hits Sam that things are changing in their lives again when he sees most of her things packed away in boxes. 

Sam prays that night for the first time in years. He prays that Cas is okay still, that he’ll come back and save them all from Dean’s teenage-maturity-level mood swings and that they can figure out what’s really going on. Maybe, for once, change will mean mostly good things. 


	15. A Wind in the Door

**Cas - February 13, 2024. 10:00 PM. Heaven.**

Nothing works. Heaven’s angel populace is more and more homogenized by the moment. It’s difficult to tell one angel from another. If they were humans they’d have no more hair, no more coloration, no more thoughts and dreams. But angels were never supposed to have any of those things anyway. And they did. Cas thinks back and holds onto every memory of angelic individuality he can think of. 

Anna fell for the freedom of the emotions and actions she wasn’t allowed to take.. 

Gabriel who ran away because he wanted his family to get along. 

Raphael and Lucifer and Michael, so angry and hurt. So ready to use what power they had to keep from being hurt ever again. 

Ion, Esper, Inias, Rachel, Muriel…so many who believed in something enough that they’d break rules or make new ones. Angels had been making choices all along, they just never realized it… 

And Hannah. Hannah who’d chosen humanity, and chosen to protect Heaven. Hannah who’d believed, like Cas had, that the completion of this trial would _help_ and _save_ the angels. 

Hannah who shows not even the most trivial shift in modulation in response to any of Cas’ ministrations. He slumps to the floor next to her. It’s not comfortable to sit here, there’s a perfect spot for Castiel. One where he belongs, where he ought to be, in consonant parity with a web of other seraphs.

No more vessel, no more worries. No more _failures_. 

It’s the notion of failure that Cas condenses around. No heavenly command ever allowed for failure: angels were made to follow instructions. In following the Word of God, or the path Heaven laid out—even as dictated by Michael, there was no such thing as wrong. They were the tools and the messengers.

It is a very Earth-like thing, the notion of failure. Every one of Cas’ failures can be traced back to the Earth; back to humans. Back to Dean, and Sam. 

Sam—

The feeling comes in stronger than his words. Sam _needs_. Sam _wants._ Sam’s brother isn’t okay again, and he thinks Cas could help. The tug of longing pulls at Cas, but the other end of the tether should be in Kansas. Here in Heaven, that pulling feels like it could come from anywhere, and from nowhere. It’s all part of the same power draw, the ebb and flow of Heaven’s signals and power. It doesn’t matter anyway. Dean doesn’t love him, not really—Dean doesn’t even truly remember him. 

Every feeling that Cas is wanted somewhere, every force that attracts him has been Heaven all along, trying to bring him home. It’s the only thing that fits. 

“Cas,” the word comes through, and Cas picks himself up from Hannah’s locality and wanders toward what feels like the source of Dean’s voice, before it comes again, “nah, never mind. Come home when you’re ready.” The voice fades out. Cas gets angry. Anger isn’t very heavenly, though most of the angels Cas has met carried it with them as closely as they kept their swords. Cas is mostly angry at himself; but a bit at Dean, too. He believes he’s allowed that anger, and it feels good. 

Cas stops following Dean’s voice, and listens to **all** of the prayers for half a second. Cas focuses on the rigidity his anger gives him, and then feels, too, the lightness that hope gives, the warmth of connections and love. He focuses on the guilt of not being able to answer each prayer he receives, and feels his resolve harden to balance his anger. Cas _believes in himself_ for a full two seconds before noticing that the white noise of Heaven has dropped well below the threshold at which he’s picking up signals of longing and prayer. He inhales a sense of emptiness hanging in the halls of Heaven, stops keying in on its amplified echoes and hones in on the bunker instead. 

 

* * *

**Cas - February 14, 2024. 2:00 AM. Map Table Room, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Cas gets home in the middle of the night. He checks in on Dean, completely silently. Then he sits down at the map table, scrunches his face up and thinks. 

The bunker whispers quiet secrets through the small hours of the morning until small vibrations echoing off smooth bunker walls tell Cas that Dean’s awake. Cas stays in the dark foyer, reading _The Wicked + The Divine_ by the faint light of the table. Just as sunlight starts peeking through the high windows, Cas can hear a soft intake of breath from across the long corridor. The rhythm of Dean’s footsteps evens out as he walks nearer. Cas doesn’t say a word as Dean approaches, and Dean follows suit. 

Dean leans over Cas, pretending to figure out what book Cas is reading. The farce lasts only briefly before Cas feels Dean’s chin rest atop his head. Dean’s right arm props itself over Cas’ shoulder, fingers dangling lightly over Cas’ collarbone. 

“Hello Dean,” Cas says without looking up from his book. 

”Hi,” Dean says, and Cas can feel Dean’s jaw move over his head, and feel the sound of Dean’s voice through his own skull. Cas suppresses a shudder, but he can also feel Dean’s jaw pull tight at what must be a smile for having successfully distracted Cas from his comic book. Instead of saying anything more though, Dean breathes easily and his fingers draw lightly across Cas’ pectoral muscles. It’s distracting, and Cas wraps his own hand around the idle fingers to still them.

“Dean, I’ve been doing some thinking.” 

“Oh yeah?” Dean says, sounding interested in _a_ response but perhaps not the content of it, “come up with anything good?” 

“Did you mean it?” Cas asks slowly, feeling Dean rub his nose through the hair on the top of Cas’ head. 

“Hmmm,” Dean hums into Cas’ hair. 

“What you said, the other day. That you—” 

Dean’s face makes a detour, landing beside Cas’ over his shoulder. “What the Hell are you reading here, anyway?” 

Cas disentangles himself from Dean and Dean’s dodging tactics, turning around in his seat to face Dean.

“I’m not reading anything, anymore.” _Obviously, I’ve been distracted_. Cas continues more deliberately, “Dean, I’ve been thinking about angels, and Heaven’s mind control, and my feelings and your feelings and what they mean, yes, but it’s not just about _fucking feelings._ You don’t want to talk about it, and that’s _fine_ , but could you just answer a few questions for me? For the case—the one we’ve been working so hard to solve. It _is_ why I showed up in the first place.”

Cas narrows his eyes, but Dean looks smaller than he did before. Dean says nothing. 

“Dean are you familiar with fairy tales? The ones that say _love heals all_?” 

“Dude, those are just stories,” Dean frowns, though he has the decency to sound a little unsure of himself. “That shit doesn’t happen in real life.”

Cas huffs in exasperation and shifts in his chair to better face Dean down. “Dean, _you hunt stories_ for a living. But it’s not that simple, either,” Cas pauses. Dean draws back a little, and his shoulders fall almost imperceptibly. Cas doesn’t know how to say this, because it’s not what Dean wants to hear; “I don’t want you to _worry,_ but when I left in anger, I’m almost certain I lost a few hours.” 

Color drains from Dean’s face, and his hands shift in the air, with nothing to hold. “I thought you were better though—” 

“I’m not done,” Cas interrupts Dean. “The _only_ time this has happened since you told me—since the other day, the only thing I can remember is thinking that maybe you hadn’t meant it. Maybe I was letting myself believe something that wasn’t true. And you know what? I think that might just be it.” 

“You don’t thi—” Dean’s voice is unsure, and his words are slow. He doesn’t understand. 

“My beliefs are important. My _faith_.” 

Dean raises an eyebrow at this. 

“Cas you haven’t had faith in…years,” Dean taps his head, as if he’s finally got something he can fight against. “I have a lot of your memories, I know that.” 

Cas leans back. “Not in God, no. Not even in myself, I suppose.” Cas wrinkles his nose. “But in you? I’ve always had faith in you, and I could always believe I was doing the _right thing_ because it was what you wanted. And when you said, _what you said_ , regardless how you meant it, I believed that. _I believed I was loved_ ,” Cas lets the words out with quiet determination, remembering the anger on his siblings’ faces and horrors they’d shown him when they hadn’t been empty shells, and wonders if needling Dean for information is worth it. There were kindnesses and love too, though. Loyalty, trust, camaraderie. 

Cas picks up the pace of his words and rambles off the rest, “Now it’s not enough, and I need more. I need to know. If I was wrong, it’s fine, and this might not even be the answer, but knowing should help me determine the next steps I have to take with—” 

“Yeah Cas. I meant what I said,” it’s Dean’s turn to interrupt, though his voice is quieter and his words feel like they might break if they hit the floor. “I do, y’know. Sometimes I wonder what exactly my memories of you are like, like I got cheated out of that part—don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you shared yours with us. But every moment you’ve spent here, god Cas, it’s something I can’t really explain.” 

Cas can feel tears on his face. It’s barely a heartbeat after his words finish before Dean’s hands enclose Cas’ face from both sides, thumbs gently smearing at wet spots. Suddenly all the feelings and humanity that Cas has been clinging to like a safety line feel too heavy. He mumbles something about washing his face off, though he’s not sure how comprehensible he could have been, and dilates himself until he’s no longer physically _there_. 

 

* * *

**Sam - February 14, 2024, 8:00 AM. Map Table Room, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

As soon as Sam walks in the door, Jody puts a finger to her lips and points down at the scene unfolding on the foyer floor. They watch Dean fumble to catch up with Cas, and try to fight against what Cas asks of him. They watch Dean’s walls fall and crumble just as easily as Cas does. Only when Cas disappears out of his brothers’ hands does Jody nudge Sam towards the staircase. 

Jody says good morning in the same tone of voice she uses when someone’s hungover, and Sam tries to match her jovial attitude as he flips switches to turn lights on, and checks a few dials before grabbing Dean by the elbow and dragging him towards the office. 

“Does this mean it’s official?” Sam asks as he checks messages on his work computer and takes a few notes, getting settled in for the day. 

“‘Bout fucking time,” chimes in Jody. 

Dean looks confused and weary and sinks down into Sam’s fancy office chair. “What am I supposed to _do_ now,” and looks up to Sam as if he might have answers, “I don’t even know how he feels...about...it.” 

Sam thinks Dean was avoiding that very thought, but it seems to have hit him like a semi trailer.

“You could try kissing him?”

Sam tries his damndest to keep a straight face at Jody’s suggestion. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, considering. “But how do I even know he wants—what am I supposed to do?” 

Jody looks up from the message she’s typing out to answer in her most serious of tones, “You’re a forty-something year old man. You _could_ just ask.” 

Dean doesn’t quite manage to form words in response; “Bw-aah?”

“Y’know, words. Honesty.” Sam tries to throw Dean a bone. Spell it out for him. 

“Jesus christ. Lying is so much easier.” Dean drags a hand across his eyes. 

Jody twists her lips up before pointing Dean out of her office. “Okay. You gave him plenty of time. Go hug your angel.” 

Dean, if anything just looks more confused. “But he left.” 

“He’s right down the hall in the bathroom, we walked right past, didn’t you—never mind.” 

Dean stands quickly, but hesitates at the door. 

Jody’s words of wisdom push him the rest of the way, ”You’ll be great, didn’t you hear what he said? Your love is what saved him. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.” 

Dean goes. Sam turns to Jody with a frown. 

“Strictly speaking, that’s not what he said.”

“Maybe, maybe not. He needed a prod, I gave him one. They’ll figure it out, but not if they sit crying in different rooms.” 

Sam’s turn to sink into a chair. “I hope they’re done now.” 

Jody gives him a look. “Is that what you think happens? Just because they figured out one thing, everything will be easy?” 

Sam sighs. “No, we’re not lucky like that.” 

“Honey, no one is lucky like that. It’s called life. Your brother will have a whole new set of things to bitch and moan about, and someday Cas will learn that he, too, can bitch and moan about Dean. You’re going to enjoy every moment of it.” 

“No I’m not.” 

“No, you’re not. But you’d rather have him here complaining than far away and silent, right?” Jody asks, a little quieter. 

Sam takes in a deep breath, and nods once, slowly. “Did you text Alex yet? She asked about Cas before she left.” 

Jody grunts, and gets out her phone. Sam rolls the office chair over to her, and leans his head on her hip. She swats at him, telling him to go answer emails, or dust books, or something. Sam unfolds himself, kisses Jody’s ear, and walks away as she smiles. 

“Hey, do you know what this means?” Jody’s voice catches Sam before he can walk out the door. 

Jody’s text to Alex mentioned that Cas was back, and likely to never leave—but Sam’s frown deepens to match Jody’s as he reads Alex’s response: “ _Tell Dean, forgiven but not forgotten. If he hurts Cas, I’ll slice his throat.”_  

Sam shakes his head. “No clue. Maybe it’s a good thing she’s going to stay with Claire.” 

Jody smacks Sam’s shoulder, hard. “She’s going to get her EMT certification, you ass. Or _whatever_ it is she needs to do.” 

“Uh huh.” 

Jody leans over to kiss Sam’s recently abused shoulder. “Go do something useful.” 

Sam frowns again, but he can’t help turning to smile at Jody once more as he leaves. 

 

* * *

**Cas - February 14, 2024. 8:45 AM. Bathroom, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

The bathroom floor is cold, but Cas can’t seem to make his legs move. He really _was_ just going to wash his face off, and then—and then what? It doesn’t matter, every raw emotion is leaking out of him in sound and saltwater, and there’s not much of himself left able to do anything else.

There’s not even enough of him to respond to the scuffles at the door, or the knock when it comes. Dean’s voice isn’t clear through the wood, but the sound of it draws up more emotion. Maybe it was hiding in his muscles, they all feel taught and tired from being wrung dry. When the door opens and Dean asks if it’s okay to come in, Cas doubts any of the reply he gets out is intelligible. 

Dean seems to understand well enough. The arms that envelop Cas are sturdy and _much warmer_ than the damp floor. 

“I didn’t know it would be like this, wasn’t expecting this kind of reaction,” Cas feels like he’s flooding the human body he inhabits, overtaxing its functions, and losing control of it at the same time. “Sorry Dean.” 

“Hey, hey. Just, just let it all out okay? Everything’s alright.” Dean pauses, looking around and swallows a laugh. “For once.”

“I thought I was all right, not knowing. It’s different though. It shouldn’t be.” 

Cas breathes into Dean’s shirt, hiding his face in soft, warm flannel. Tentative fingers drag through Cas’ hair, before settling at the back of Cas’ neck rubbing calm circles like they belong there. Dean’s rhythmic breaths aren’t the invariable beats of Heaven’s perfection but they’ve got a pull of their own. Cas relaxes fully for the first time in years. 

After a few minutes of kneeling quietly on the tile floor, Dean very gently shifts his weight. He grunts softly, bending his head closer in towards Cas’ and murmurs, “You mind if we do the rest of this standing? My knees don’t like this hard floor.” 

Cas nods, and leans away from Dean, letting the cool damp air of the bathroom seep into his skin. As Dean straightens out, Cas taps a finger to his knee, before unfurling himself. 

“That’s a really nice trick, Cas,” Dean says, grinning all the way up to the wrinkles lining his eyes. 

Cas wants to reach out to Dean, and isn’t sure if that’s the proper protocol anymore. When Dean leans forward, every perfunctory sense Cas normally leaves to monitor his surroundings converges on the human being directly before him. 

Dean’s voice is as warm as the hand he reaches out to grab Cas’ shoulder with, saying, “Hey so this might be a really bad time, but if I were to kiss you woul—” 

 Dean’s words come too slowly, and Cas doesn’t let him finish. 

Part of Cas wants to push Dean up against the bathroom door and drag every bit of heat out of Dean; the love in his words, the physical energy in his skin, and the bright power in the spirit of Dean’s soul. Instead, he finds Dean’s fingers with his own as his lips gently diffuses the end of Dean’s question. 

Cas can feel the smile return to Dean’s face. The hand on Cas’ shoulder finds its way back to his head, this time threading fingers through hair and holding on. Cas’ awareness draws itself tightly around the moment and yet feels lacking. When Dean withdraws the slight distance necessary for breath, Cas lets his senses widen a bit and shudders at the recoil. 

Rough lips press to Castiel’s forehead, and are quickly replaced with Dean’s smoother forehead. 

“You’re still with me, right?” Dean asks, a hair breathless still. 

“As long as you want me.” 

Dean’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and his fingers tighten in Cas’ hair. 

Clattering knuckles against the wooden frame of the (now) open bathroom door alert both Dean and Cas to Sam’s presence. 

Sam cringes a little and rubs at his closed eyelids, “I hate to interrupt, but, could you maybe _not_ monopolize the bathroom?” Sam’s eyebrows gain effusiveness as he gains momentum. “That’d be great.” 

Dean looks around appraisingly and swears soundly at Sam before holding both hands out to Cas again. 

 

* * *

**Cas - February 14, 2024. 1:30 PM. Basement Garage, Men of Letters Bunker, Lebanon, KS.**

Hours later Dean seems loathe to take his eyes off of Cas, like he might still disappear. They’re sitting on the Impala in the chilly basement garage again, only this time Dean’s tracing circles on the back of Cas’ hand with his thumb. Dean leaks latent invocations that tug at Cas on a deeper level than prayer. If Cas was interpreting benedictions, he’d say the signals feel something like a child reaching out for her parents, or a lover for his beloved. 

“You mind if I ask you a strange question, Cas?” Dean says softly, leaning into Cas a little. 

  
“Might as well,” Cas deadpans, smiling. 

“You didn’t hold back any memories right? I mean, this—” Dean gestures anxiously, and Cas feels Dean’s shoulder fall, “we never did this before? Kissing or anything?” 

Cas turns to look at Dean and frowns. “No. I have no memory of that. Why?” 

“Dunno. Feels, right. Y’know, like the other stuff did too. Like knowing you,” Dean responds with a lopsided grin. “That sounds like a terrible pickup line, sorry man.” 

“Does it still worry you when things feel right?” Cas asks. 

“Like fate? Nah, fuck that. I’m pretty sure no one in Heaven or Hell or wherever thinks you’re my destiny, Cas. See, it was a stupid question.” 

“Hmmmm,” Cas hums. “Maybe if it was right before we completed the spells. I can’t remember what happened right before that, or right after. I remember preparing…” 

“I last-night-on-earthed you? Hell of a thing to forget. I mean, that sounds like me,” Dean says, smiling. 

“Or maybe it just feels right because you like kissing me,” Cas says, trying to defend himself. 

Dean grunts, and his hand finds Cas’ again. 

“D’you think you can help them now?” Dean’s voice hits a more serious note, and he looks conspicuously upwards.

“Err—you mean, the other angels? Maybe. I don’t know where to start but… maybe.”

“Cas if there’s anything I can do, short of dying, lemme know.”

“You don’t really like any of the angels though.” 

Dean threads his fingers between Cas and squeezes a bit, ”Yeah but you do, so it’s important.”

“Dean,” Cas says, not having any other word to describe his emotions. He pulls at Dean’s hand where it links them, bringing Dean’s center of gravity under his own control, and smiles. Cas lowers his voice before asking, “Is this a really bad time to—” 

Fair is fair, and this time Dean doesn’t let him finish. 

 


	16. Epilogue: May 15, 2025

Waking up with arms and legs tangled with Cas’ is a special treat. It’s almost a shame Cas doesn’t sleep. 

When Cas spends nights in Heaven, or answering prayers and emergency calls from hunters, Dean gets the bed to himself, which is nice too. 

But waking up and _seeing Cas there_ , whether he spent the night or not, that’s the best thing in the world. 

This morning, Cas has the sort of faraway look in his eyes that worries Dean the most. He reaches over, runs fingers across Cas' forearm, and recites the best spell he knows; “I love you.”

“I’m here Dean, I haven't gone anywhere,” Cas says, smiling gently. He keeps his eyes closed half a minute longer, seemingly listening to nothing, before turning to Dean. “Asariel and Zarall told me what they've been doing. It astonishes them that anyone might care to listen. They've both been doing quite well, lately." 

Dean feels the goofy smile on his face but he can’t help it. Cas’ excitement about each small victory is contagious.

There are days where smiling is still hard to do, too. Dean’s not allowed to answer phones anymore when Cas is away—but Cas and their other friends are making a huge amount of progress in Heaven. 

Knowing _how_ the spell was disrupting the angels hadn’t been quite enough to fix it, but with some creative hacking on Ash’s part and an entire network of bored denizens of Heaven they’d re-engineered the angelic programming devices and started giving ego back to angels. 

Just prying them away hadn’t been enough either; without forging connections and building up faith in themselves, they were all pulled back into stasis by the spell eventually. 

So they created a sort of angel volunteer program.

Many of the angels have taken to helping out new souls in Heaven, connecting friends and family, and befriending lonely souls. All of it benefits the angels just as much as it does the human souls. 

When they sit down on the couch with their coffee, half of Cas’ mind is still on the reports coming in over angel radio. Dean grins into his mug as he watches. 

”We were meant to serve, but I think they had to forget themselves long enough to remember that,” Cas says. 

“So what about you, are you all about serving now too?" Dean asks, teasing. He’s a little jealous of the time Cas spends helping them all. Dean also knows exactly how much Cas is willing to serve. 

Cas rolls his eyes with practiced exaggeration. 

“I’m afraid I’m way too selfish for a life of servitude, Dean. I’m broken, remember?” Half of Cas’ face smiles in a way that’s painfully awkward. Dean pulls his broken angel closer, while Cas continues, “There are too many things I’m attached to, and too many things I want. I don't want to forget any of them."

“What do you want right now?” Dean asks, curious.

“For you to shut up and let me drink my coffee.” 

Dean snorts. 

“If you’re looking for suggestions though…”

Lips pressed to every surface of the human body. Because, of course, taste does nothing for Cas, but infrared radiation captivates him like a cat. _Heat_. Dean swallows as he tries to picture it. _Body heat_. He tries not to picture it so hard. 

“Yeah. We could uh. Try that. If you want. Sounds alright.” Dean licks his lips and swallows again, and tries to shine the spotlight away from himself. “What about if I pray sexy thoughts at you? Does that do anything?” 

Cas looks considering, and then smiles from his eyes down. “I don’t know, maybe you could give me an example.” 

Cas is full of shit, and Dean knows it. 

Dean leans across the couch cushion, lightly knocks his forehead against Cas’ temple, and whispers, “Dear Cas, I’m sorry but I _promised_ my brother’s wife I’d head up north so you’ll have to fucking wait.” 

“We can be there in seconds.” 

“I hate angel express,” Dean says. 

Cas frowns. 

“I need my car if I’m going to get anything in order to sell that house. C’mon, it’ll be fun. Road trip! Just you and me. Please?” 

And, because Cas loves him (or so Dean imagines is the reason) he shrugs instead of arguing. 

Sometimes Dean gets ridiculous flashes of déja vu; feelings and emotions that none of Cas’ memories satisfy. As they hit route 30 in Grand Island, Dean wants nothing more than to pull over and push Cas up against the car, and ravage him silly. Which isn’t the worst thought Dean’s ever had, but it’s not a memory of his or Cas’. Yet. 

“Hey, you wanna drive?” Dean asks. 


End file.
